Does My Garage Door Need Reinforcement?

We always tell clients that All Garage Doors Need To Be Reinforced but only with proper opener attachment mounting brackets along with a horizontal cross brace referred to as struts. The parts will prevent the overhead door panels from cracking, splitting, or bowing.

Flimsy garage doors can be blown even with a strong gust of wind and often damaging your car. It is also not the Best Thing For Your Opener. That’s why it is so essential to ensure that your garage door, regardless of its size or weight, is properly reinforced. Reinforced Garage Doors last a long time.

Why Should Every Garage Door Be Reinforced?

Many people may overlook this, but the heavy usage coupled with the large surface area can end up making your garage door a weak point. Plus, you need to factor in that most people will use their garage doors as the main entry point, which adds up to an average of a thousand cycles a year.

You then have the outer surface area, which is another source of trouble with double doors, which hangs over 100 sq/ft, and happens to be exposed to hail, wind or anything else that may come it’s way. Winters can also be pretty hard on garage doors; you have snow, wind, hail, and ice, damaging the garage door. The winter seal may also freeze the surface below. When you try opening the garage door, it will attempt to lift what is a door that’s frozen stuck, causing the top to rip apart. So, having reinforcement is an excellent way to improve longevity and also performance.

Reinforce the existing Garage Door

If you have a garage door installed, you can take steps to Reinforce It. Since the topmost section of the garage door is under the most stress, and has a garage door opener attached to it’s center stile, which pushes or pulls it in each direction as needed. The bottom is also under a great deal of stress since the tension from the torsion spring is directed to the bottom corner. You also have the bottom section sitting the nearest to the ground and will make hard contact with the ground if you manually operate it.

We encounter 75% of damaged panels during house calls that involve the top section of the garage door. That’s why in our experience and that of many experts, the top section of the garage door needs to have both vertical and horizontal reinforcement.

 Top Panel Garage Door Reinforcement

The most important step to reinforcing the garage door is to install an opener reinforcement bracket. If you plan to raise or lower the garage door manually, you will not need the bracket. Many garage door openers come with a small bracket with anchors hook-up to the top panel, similar to a cluster. The problem with the bracket is that its not designed to redistribute the load evenly. So, you have excessive tension, which can often rip the centre style off, especially during winter.

The solution to the problem is to use an operator adjustable reinforcement bracket that can be installed on the top panel to prevent the center style from being pulled off. The bracket takes up the centre style’s full length, which evenly distributes the tension across the entire height of the door stile.

Conclusion

You always want to make sure that garage door technicians install the brackets. Garage door opener technicians like us can ensure that the bracket is installed correctly, providing much-needed and proper reinforcement.