Garage door repair, installation and openers in Pickering

Three of every four houses are from the same forty years

Pickering had 99,186 people in 2021, up 8.1 per cent on 2016, and 33,425 occupied dwellings. 23,845 of those dwellings were built between 1961 and 2000: 8,350 in the 1960s and 1970s, 8,955 in the 1980s and 6,540 in the 1990s. That is 71 per cent of the city built in one forty-year run, in the south of the city, in Dunbarton, Liverpool, Rouge Hill and the streets around Frenchman's Bay. Then building slowed: 1,680 dwellings from 2001 to 2005 and 1,315 from 2006 to 2010.

A door on a 1979 house is on its second or third opener and its second or third set of springs. The door itself may be original. So Pickering is an opener town before it is a new-door town: the call is a LiftMaster, Chamberlain or Genie unit to replace one that strains, stalls or has stopped, and the choice on those streets is a belt drive for a garage under a bedroom and a chain drive for a garage that is not. The range is on garage door openers, and the repair option, where the motor runs and the door stays put, is on opener repair.

Seaton is where the new doors are

The province assembled about 8,100 hectares of north Pickering in the early 1970s for a community that was to serve a federal airport. The airport was cancelled for good in January 2025. The community is being built anyway: construction started near Taunton Road in 2017 and had reached Whites Road and Highway 7 by 2023, toward a planned 70,000 people and 35,000 jobs. As of 2022 only 1,549 of 20,989 planned units were up. Those are the 2,845 dwellings the census counts from 2016 to 2021, and they are the only place in Pickering where a door is the builder's and a few years old. On a Seaton house the work is an upgrade, a quieter opener with battery backup, or an insulated Garaga, Amarr or Stanley door where the builder fitted a plain one. Design Your Door shows the door on a photograph of the house.

The generating station

Pickering Nuclear Generating Station put its first unit into service on 29 July 1971. The four Pickering B units followed between 1983 and 1986, Unit 4 was shut down for good on 31 December 2024, and on 30 January 2024 the province committed to refurbishing the four B units, work expected to finish in the mid-2030s. The station employs 3,000 people and makes about 11 per cent of Ontario's power. A plant that runs on shifts sends people out of their garages at hours a nine-to-five street never sees, and the door that fails at 5 a.m. is the one that gets the call. The contractor shops and supply yards that serve a site like that run commercial overhead doors, which Protech services along with commercial openers.

Getting a van to Pickering

Bonhill Road to central Pickering is about 50 km by road, 46 of them on the 401, coming off at Kingston Road. Pickering is the nearest Durham page on the Mississauga run, and it is still on the far side of Toronto from the branch, so a same-day call here is a longer window than in Mississauga. There is no Pickering premises. Repairs are booked same day. Give the street and the door type; Rouge Hill and Seaton are at opposite corners of the city.

Permits in Pickering

The City of Pickering's Accessory Buildings and Structures page says any structure over 10 square metres, other than a hot tub, needs a building permit before it goes up, and that one over 10 square metres has to sit at least 1.0 metre from every neighbouring property line. A door replaced in its own opening is not a structure. A new detached garage is, and so is any change to the size of the opening, so ask the City for that address before widening a 1970s single into a double.

Repair or replace, and what it costs

On a 1970s or 1980s Pickering house the door is often worth keeping and the opener is the bill. When the door has rusted through at the bottom section, or the panels have cracked and a spring would be the third set on a door that has had two, the replacement figure is the one to compare. A single-skin door on a garage that shares a wall with a family room is the case where an insulated door changes the room behind it. Ask for the repair figure and the replacement figure together. Garage door replacement sets out what decides them.

Garage doors in Pickering

Garage doors in Pickering raise a width question on any house built with a single door, because a double door needs a driveway to match it. Protech supplies and fits Garaga, Amarr and Stanley overhead doors here from the Mississauga branch, singles and doubles, and the City sets the limit at the curb.

Its driveway widening rules allow a driveway access no wider than 3.0 m on a lot with less than 11.0 m of frontage, and 6.0 m on a wider lot, with one access per lot. Cutting the curb to widen the apron takes a permit under Boulevard Maintenance By-law 6831/08. A 16-foot double door is about 4.9 m across, so on a narrow lot it would open onto an access less than two-thirds its own width, while a 9-foot single, about 2.7 m, fits inside the 3.0 m.

Before a single becomes a double, check the frontage on the survey and the driveway widths in Table 5.3 of Zoning By-law 8149/24, which the City points to for lots outside Seaton. Seaton lots, zoned with an S prefix, follow Section 14 instead. The common widths and heights are set out in standard garage door sizes.

Send the form

No phone number is printed here. Send the form with the street, the door type and what the door is doing, or email info@protechgarage.ca, and the Mississauga branch will reply with a time.