Garage doors and their types
There are an estimated 1.4 billion cars on the road right now, worldwide, and the number is growing quite rapidly. But there aren’t as many parking spots designated as the number of cars produced. The safest place for a car to rest is the garage, without a doubt and the garage door is the essential piece that ensures that safety. One cannot undermine the significance of a garage door, for it completes a garage or aids the garage in achieving its purpose, which in some rare cases is as the birthplace of influential start-ups and entrepreneurship.
Garage doors have undergone transformative processes in their design to improve functionality and aesthetic appeal over the years since their inception in the 1900s. C G Johnson’s overhead garage door of the 1920s was a game-changer and sparked various models in the later period. These models vary in many different aspects like door material, color, attached windows, hardware, insulation, and finish. But the core separating factor of each is its basic structural design.
Varieties of garage doors
Garage doors are commonly categorized into six main types concerning their mechanical construct – sectional, roll-up, side hinged, slide to the side, tilt-up canopy, and tilt-up retractable.
Sectional garage doors are usually made out of steel and do not require high maintenance. They also can be customized with textures, colors, hardware, and window inserts. They are made out of panel sections connected with hinges. Each panels’ edges are fitted with wheels, which roll on a vertical track on either side of the door opening as it opens and closes. The door sits parallel to the ceiling when open and aligned to the wall when closed due to the hinges’ bend over a curved part of the track. The door is operated by cables attached to high tension springs.
Roll-up garage doors are predominant in the commercial sector rather than in residencies. Also known as coiling doors, these doors are built to endure heavy and rough usage. They can be installed without the inclusion of springs and are generally enclosed to prevent corrosion or rust. The cost of installation of this kind of door is higher than that of the sectional garage door.
The slide to side garage door works by being folded to a side of the garage to rest parallel to the wall. Even with slight slopes in the ceiling or floor, the trolleys they perform are flexible to overcome the trouble. These doors typically have a built-in retractable motor supporting the automated operation and do not require balancing springs.
Side-hinged doors are the classical door model, which resembles the clichéd front entry doors which swing open from a hinged frame on either side. They resemble large storehouse doors and have increased demand in recent times. Although made out of wood generally, they are also manufactured out of galvanized steel.
When open, tilt-up canopy doors rest parallel to the ceiling like the name suggests and noses a bit past the house’s front. These doors tilt up into the garage using a pivoting hinge mechanism. They are made of a single solid piece, thus lacking any sections. The material generally used includes steel, wood, and other reinforced alloys.
The tilt-up retractable garage doors showcase a design with a mechanism similar to that of the tilt-up canopy doors, as both of them lift up and into the garage. But here, they are suspended independently from the frame, thus preventing protrusion from the front of the house. Despite sharing a similarity, the installation costs for tilt-up retractable doors are higher.
Each of these six assortments is fully customizable in color, hardware, and texture, even though some adhere to a generic standard.
Indeed, a garage lacking a door to it is naked in a sense. With varieties of fully automated doors in the market today, the selection process of a suitable garage gateway is as tricky as its assembly process. Garage door installation is an arduous task and quite complicated for laypeople. One cannot hope to do a mediocre job in constructing it, for a poorly built door here is equivalent to the door’s non-existence. Therefore it is advised to contact and assign the construction duty to an able-bodied and well-named crew or person dedicated to the business. Many firms compete healthily in this field and cater to the need of the customer, constructing fully customized garage doors in favor of the client’s need and appeal.
