Weatherproofing your home, and in particular, your garage is a massive part of home upkeep. Rain, wind and even the sun can all cause untold damage to your property over time and one of the main hot spots is always your garage door. Your garage door is probably the single largest opening into your home and if it isn't well protected against the elements they can easily begin to cause problems. These problems, however, small can quickly turn into bigger ones and we all know that the bigger the problem the bigger the cost is to fix them!
So it is always worth taking a little time to research and take a proactive role in ensuring your garage door and its seals are protecting your property to the best of their ability. That way you can enjoy maximum peace of mind.
Weatherproofing your garage door seals usually involves very simple procedures such as adding or replacing the seal along the bottom of the door and the weatherstripping on the stop molding along the sides and top of the door. Depending on your door design you may also be able to add thin weatherstripping between the door panels to really seal and make the door as airtight (weatherproof) as possible. Read on below to find out about these processes in more detail.
First up is the garage door bottom seal, sometimes referred to as a door sweep. This seal is usually a long strip of vinyl or rubber that is attached to the bottom edge of your garage door. Being flexible, it can compress when the door fully closes and thus seal up any tiny gaps that were left in between the rigid door and ground. You can always tell if your current seal needs replacing by standing in the garage during the daytime, closing the door and then looking for any daylight filtering through the bottom.
Different garage doors need different bottom seals. For example, wooden doors usually use a strip style seal with angled edges that go against the front of the door and the ground. There is also the U-shaped rubber seal often referred to as a T-style or astragal seal. These seals run along channels on the bottom of mainly metal garage doors. U-shaped gaskets are easy to install (even on wood doors) and are a great way to weather seal the bottom of your garage door.
Another troublespot for containing the elements is a garage door’s sides and top. Sealing these areas is often called stop molding weatherproofing. This procedure involves rubber or vinyl weatherstripping that is installed onto the stop molding to form a seal against the different types of elements.
Remember to check your weatherstripping at least once a year to make sure the seal still works and hasn’t been worn away from the door. If it needs replacing, weatherstripping comes in easy to use rolls from any decent hardware store - Just get a sharp utility knife, a hammer, and some galvanized nails or screws and off you go!
As mentioned before, depending on your garage door design, you may want to apply weatherstripping in-between the actual door panels. V-shaped garage door panel weather stripping is designed exactly for this. You literally seal each panel individually. Usually, this is done on older wooden doors that have flat edges, as newer designed metal and fiberglass doors do not have interlocking edges.
Again, you can easily install panel weatherstripping with the tools mentioned above. You will find once the door closes the panels compress the weatherstripping to create an extremely effective seal.
As you may have realized, weatherproofing your garage can be quite a simple process. However, if the idea of spending a few hours trying to attach seals and properly finishing off the job doesn’t appeal to you then there are alternatives.
If you live within the greater Los Angeles area then why not give us a call at the Pena Garage Door Company? We can have one of our professional garage techs out to your residence promptly to completely weatherproof your garage door so that you don’t have to lift a finger or even worry about if the seals are perfect. We guarantee to do the job right on the first attempt.
You can reach out to our team on (800) 960-7362 or via our contact page.