Garage door replacement in Ottawa

A garage door in Ottawa gets replaced for a short list of reasons, and most of them show at the bottom of the door before anywhere else. Protech takes the old door out and fits the new one from its shop at 46 Grenfell Crescent in Nepean. What decides that it is time, in this city, is below; the four general cases are on the garage door replacement page.

Salt is what ends most Ottawa doors

The City of Ottawa puts about 190,000 tonnes of road salt on its streets in a winter, a figure its operational research manager gave Capital Current, and that count leaves out what private contractors and homeowners spread. Brine comes home on the tyres, runs off onto the slab, and the bottom section of the door stands in it from December to March. Then the snow goes: 184.5 cm a year at the Ottawa CDA station, melting through roughly 73 days on which the temperature crosses zero, so the bottom edge is wet, frozen and wet again for weeks. Steel gives up at the bottom section first, and in Ottawa the rust starts on the inside foot of the door, in the salt, and works out to the face.

Look from inside the garage with the door down. Paint lifting along the bottom edge, a seal retainer that has parted from the steel, a corner that gives under a thumb: that door has reached the point where a spring or a cable is money on a door that is leaving.

The doors that are due now

Ottawa's 2021 census puts 115,070 occupied homes in the 1961 to 1980 bracket and 64,815 earlier than that. Whatever door those garages carry today is one of three: single-skin steel from a 1980s or 1990s replacement, wood with a bottom rail rotted from the slab up, or a fibreglass door gone brittle in the cold. The second group is the 109,290 homes built between 1981 and 2000 in Orléans, Barrhaven and Kanata Lakes. A good number are still on the door the builder chose, over a garage that turned out to have a bedroom above it, and it shows up as a call where nothing is broken and the room over the garage is the cold one.

Repair or replace, in Ottawa terms

Protech does not quote a price online. What can be said is how the decision runs on three Ottawa garages. A 1990s single-skin door on a Barrhaven garage under a bedroom, with a snapped torsion spring: the spring is a part, but the door is the wrong specification for a heated wall, so the question on the call is whether the new spring goes on this door or the next one. A wood door on a detached 1950s garage in Alta Vista with a rotten bottom rail: that is a replacement in single-layer steel, unless the street front calls for wood. A creased bottom panel on a 2016 door in Half Moon Bay after a bumper found it: a single section while the model and colour are still made. Ask for the repair figure and the replacement figure together.

What leaves with the door

The springs come out unwound and they leave: they were sized to the old door's weight and fit nothing else. Track and rollers normally go too. The opener stays if it has safety eyes and enough motor for the new door, and goes if it does not. Ask to see the old bottom section and the old springs before they leave the garage; the wear you were told about should be there to look at.

The opening, the permit and the order

A replacement goes into the opening that exists, which is the case the City of Ottawa exempts from a building permit: "replacing doors or windows (provided they are in the same size opening)". The measure from Nepean, the made-to-measure order and the fitting day are the same as for a first door, and the installation page has them.

Get both figures

(613) 845-9950 answers at any hour. Describe the bottom of the door, the age of the house, whether the garage is attached and what is above it. If the door is stuck or hanging on one cable today, that is a repair call first and a replacement conversation second. The Ottawa branch covers the whole city from Nepean; email info@protechgarage.ca for a replacement quote with no rush behind it.