Cardale Ups Its Game
Since Cardale Garage Doors bought out Henderson in early 2009 and they are both now part of the BRP group, they have been busy designing a hybrid of the best of the two manufacturer’s door designs.
The changes that have now been implemented since consolidating to one factory in Bowburn offer a significant improvement to the security and ease of installation of these steel garage doors.
Cardale’s product development team have taken the best from both brands and borrowed some ideas from the likes of Hormann and Garador by introducing a chassis based construction of the doors. This superior method of making garage doors gives a stronger and stiffer door for improved reliability and security. The chassis system gives a ‘no-rivet’ construction for a neater overall appearance of the door panel.
The security has been improved with steel telescopic locking rods to replace the previous flimsy cables. The locking latches are spring loaded for a ‘fit and forget’ secured door. To improve your garage’s security even more you can upgrade to the 4 point locking option instead of the standard 2 point system.
Cardale garage doors have addressed the defects in it’s previous door design and made real improvements to it’s range which it now shares with the popular Henderson brand.
Product Review: Hormann Caxton Timber Garage Door
Hi guys this is a personal product review of the Hormann Caxton – classified under the wooden garage doors of the up & over variety. This is a post that will try to get into a good amount of detail on this particular product – describing it and putting into vivid perspective pretty much everything there is practically to know about it. Take note that this is a review and it is not meant to replace the good advice of a professional garage door dealer. This is good for reference but the opinion of the experts always comes first. Having said that, here we go!
Of course, there are many different types of garage doors. Different mechanisms open and close these types and they are made from different material too. The up & over type, which is the classification of the Hormann Caxton Timber Garage Door is probably the most commonly used. (The sectional types and the roller types are gaining in popularity too but that’s a different story.) Garage doors are also made out of different types of material – steel, fibreglass and in this case, good old cedar wood. All of these materials are practical and sturdy enough to use for the long term.
There are many common and unique features on this model of garage door. The first thing noticeable about the model is that it looks like a typical pair of side hinges doors, but is actually as mentioned, an up & over. This adds a good amount of style and elegance to the appearance of one’s home from the outside without sacrificing convenience of easy opening and closing of your garage. Like other wooden garage doors however, it does need the regular maintenance that all wooden doors need to have. Thus, it can be said that a wooden garage door is less practical than say, a steel garage door. However, for the beautiful authentic wood finish it is definitely worth it.
The model was even customized in certain ways for added benefit and features. First, while it starts off with a built in ordinary two point locking system, it can be upgraded to a four point locking system. This added safety and security is in my opinion worth it and can be said to be a satisfactory feature in this regard. Secondly, it may be upgraded with the use of an automatic garage door opener that is compatible with it. Lastly, you can have the doors added with stain protection for added longevity for your investment.
At the moment, the Hormann Caxton Timber Garage Door can be considered as a superior among other up and over wooden garage doors. You have a good number of features that prove the quality of its brand, while at the same time adding other options plus the advantage of making your garage and home look good. For any added information such as ordering and actually taking a look at a model, please get in touch.
Not Every Electric Garage Door Opener Can Open Every Garage Door!
If you’re just building your new garage, you’ve probably already made the no-brainer decision to use an electric garage door opener. What you may not have thought about is the fact that there are a lot of different types of electric garage door opener on the market, and not every type is appropriate for every job.
Garage doors can be extraordinarily heavy — even the thinnest sheet of steel weighs dozens of kilos when it’s seven feet tall and seven feet wide! They’re also extremely cumbersome, to boot. Add insulation, or make the door out of hardwood, and you’re rapidly getting to unusable territory unless you have the right machine for the job. When you stack on the additional torque required by roller garage doors versus multipanel overhead garage doors versus single-panel tilting doors, you’ve got a puzzle you need a lot of information to solve.
The various types of electric garage door opener vary widely in their abilities. There are basically three types of drive available on these machines: chain, screw, and belt. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks. (There are also torsion-spring drives available, but these require precision and expertise to install properly and aren’t anything that a homeowner should be attempting to use without qualified on-site help.)
The original, tried-and-true electric garage door opener is the ‘chain drive’. This type has a chain that looks very much a bicycle chain which the motor drives. They make quite a racket, and they require regular lubrication and replacement or adjustment as the gears and chain age and expand and contract with the seasonal temperature changes.
The next step up is the belt-based opener. Widely considered to be the most maintenance-free type of electric garage door opener, the belt type opener is also the fastest. The installation process is pretty much the same as for a chain drive system. This form of garage opener has the fewest moving parts of any of the three major kinds, and produces significantly less noise than a chain drive unit. They tend to run about £50 more than their chain-drive counterparts, but it’s well worth it just to have a garage door that opens twice as quickly as your old one.
The belt-driven electric garage door opener has the distinct advantage of being quiet. There are not metal-on-metal connections in a belt-driven system, except for the noise of the wheels on the side of the doors moving in their tracks, and, if you have one of the new sectional garage doors, it’s entirely reasonable to put a belt-driven garage door directly adjacent to a bedroom; that’s how quiet they are.
Finally screw drive openers are available from some US manufacturers but are considered outdated in the UK.
All three models come with motors of varying strengths, and it’s critically important to get a motor that’s powerful enough to lift your garage door. Generally speaking, the more expensive the electric garage door opener the more likely it will handle whatever you may have but always check the lifting force first.
Where Did Electric garage door openers Come From?
Nearly everyone that rents or owns a home has a garage, and most of them enjoy the use of electric electric garage door openers. But few people have ever looked into the history of these valuable bits of home machinery.
Electric garage door openers
In 1926, C.G. Johnson of Hartford City Indiana developed the first overhead electric electric garage door openers. Many people believe that electric garage door openers produce enough torque to pull the garage door up on its own, but in reality, the door is far to heavy for a small electric motor to move at all. The truth is, a pair or more of powerful springs under constant tension provide the bulk of the lifting power — just not quite enough to pull the door up on their own. The motor operates a winch that rotates a bicycle-like chain connected to the door, providing that little bit of extra lift that it takes to move it up and down.
The door itself has wheels on its sides that roll along inside of a track, which guides the door into the right position. Limiting switches on the track tell the motor to stop rotating when the door reaches the full-open or full-close positions, and most motors come with on board limiters that can be set as well. The motor itself also serves as a lock, keeping the garage door from opening.
Almost every modern electric garage door openers also feature quick-release disconnects that allow you to disengage the garage door from the machinery, allowing you to access your garage even if the machine breaks down and prevents you from opening your garage door any other way.
Remote Control
The first remote-control electric garage door openers were very simple, using only a transmitter and a receiver which activated the motor. The transmitter used a unique frequency, and the receiver had to be tuned to the same frequency. When the receiver ‘heard’ its signal, it would activate the motor, which would raise or lower the door appropriately.
When it first came into public use, this was cutting-edge technology, fresh in from World War II. In the fighting, the system was used to remotely detonate bombs. That said, it was not without it’s drawbacks: even at the lowest possible signal strength, the remotes activated nearby units and other mechanisms that used similar technology.
That means that your neighbors frequently and constantly opened and closed your garage door by mistake. Of course, it didn’t take manufacturers long to fix this flaw. By equipping each remote and receiver with a variety of possible frequencies, it was made far less likely that you would accidentally activate a neighbor’s remote.
Modern electric garage door openers have remotes with special features that prevent criminals from duplicating or copying the frequency of a remote or from reprogramming a remote to a different frequency in order to open garage doors unintended by the remote’s owner. With ‘hopping’ or ‘rolling code’ technology, each time the remote’s button is pushed, the receiver, in addition to opening the garage door, sends a signal back to the remote that tells it which frequency to use on the next button-push. This practically guarantees that any given remote will only work on the correct garage opener.
Five Reasons To Replace Your Electric Garage Door Openers — Even If It Works!
Replacing your electric garage door openers seems like an unnecessary expense until they completely breaks down, but in reality garage door openers are complex machines that may hide several problems. In addition, manufacturers regularly come out with new, innovative additions or alterations to their older models which can add significant performance, safety, and convenience.
Here are the top five reasons you might want to consider replacing your garage door opener even if it seems to be working decently.
Safety Reversal
If you have an old-model garage door opener with no safety reversal, or your safety reversal system doesn’t work, it should be replaced immediately! Manufacturers are required by law to equip their electric garage door openers with these devices, which generally consist of a pair of sensors placed about six inches off the ground, just on either side of the door. If the sensors detect something that would obstruct the door closing, they tell the motor to stop and re-open the door before it closes more than halfway.
Noise
Most new models of garage door opener are quiet and smooth. They utilize screw-based drives that run with significantly less noise pollution than the old models. The old models use a chain-based system that looks significantly like a bicycle chain — and it rattles, squeaks, and groans like one as well. If you look at your electric garage door openers and you see something that looks like a bicycle chain coming out, you may want to strongly consider replacing them.
Security
For quite some time, it was common for home invaders and burglars to cruise the streets and click their garage door remotes at every house they drove by. If they found one that worked — which was surprisingly easy to do — they would watch it, and use their remote to break in to the house once everyone was out. Since then, the criminals have gotten even more clever, using special devices that mimic all of the common signals produced by garage door opener remotes.
To counter that, newer electric garage door openers use special ever-changing signals that are nearly impossible to hack. If you’re not using a model with this feature, you are in much greater danger of being burgled.
Keyless Entry
If you have an early-generation garage door opener, chances are if you didn’t have your keys and your remote got lost or ran out of batteries, you were forced to park your car outside. Today’s electric garage door openers come with keypads that you can access from outside your garage which allow you to open the garage without needing a key. There are even super-modern models which offer fingerprint scanning, allowing you even greater security with your keyless entry system.
It is possible to purchase a keypad separately and add it to your existing system, but in most cases it’s more reliable and more effective to simply purchase a new garage door opener in its entirety.
Battery Backup
Your garage door opener probably won’t work if there’s a power outage. Since blackouts frequently occur during storms, you’re looking at the worst possible time to leave your car out in the open. Modern electric garage door openers come with battery backups which allow them to operate several dozen times without needing direct power — and when the power does come back on, they recharge the batteries automatically!
These are just a few of the ways in which modern electric garage door openers are clearly superior to the older models, any one of which makes a good reason to replace your system even if it seems to be working for you.
Maintaining your Garage Door
If your garage door opener is broken, you’ve immediately got several different problems looming on your horizon — the cost of the garage parts being one of the least of your concerns. If it’s stuck open, you’re looking at a home security issue that could lead to burglary or home invasion, an insulation and water leak that could damage any belongings you have stored in your garage, and of course, your car is in danger of being stolen! If it’s closed, then your car is in even more danger out in the open — and of course you have the inconvenience of being unable to access the contents of your garage from the outside.
But that assumes that the door is totally broken, and we addressed whole-door repair a few days ago. There are lots of / other small ways that garage parts can go wrong, and each requires its own little bit of maintenance.
The door goes up and down by itself.
Most likely, this is simply an issue of you sharing a bit of garage door opener bandwidth with a nearby neighbor. Follow the given instructions on how to change your system’s frequency, and this problem should vanish.
The door only closes halfway, then reopens.
This is frequently the result of a dirty or cracked lens on your garage door opener’s photocell safety system. The lenses are one of those garage parts that few people think to maintain properly. These systems are present to keep the garage door from closing on a car or a child — it is supposed to detect an obstruction and retract the door. If there is a problem with the lens, you might need to clean it with a dry clean cloth — or if it’s physically damaged, you may need to replace it.
Pressing the button on your garage opener does nothing.
One of the most common complaints about any garage door opener is that the garage simply stops opening when you push the button. This is one of the simplest garage parts to fix: a vast majority of the time, you simply need new batteries. If that doesn’t work, you simply need a new remote or to reprogram it.
The garage door opener doesn’t automatically stop if the opening is obstructed.
This is a particularly dangerous occurrence — doubly so if your door is also opening and closing unexpectedly due to a bandwidth overlap — as it can cause injury or death in children. If you notice this occurring, immediately contact your garage parts supplier and find it what it will take to get, at the minimum, a new safety mechanism put in.
Dozens of other people’s remotes work on your garage door opener.
This is a kind of a repeat from above, but it’s worth noting because it happens so regularly with cheaper models. Even if no one in your road is using the factory settings on their garage door openers, if you never change the bandwidth, that means anyone who has a factory-generic setting on their opener can use it to open your garage door. So make sure you change it!
By keeping these simple DIY repair tasks up-to-date and double-checking your garage parts at least once a year, you will ensure that your garage door opener remains a valuable asset to your home and family.
What’s the Most Secure Garage Door Type?
Who else doesn’t really care about their garage door? Why not? You should, just because it might look a bit aged and it’s not that easy to open anymore. Your garage door protects all the household products that you store in a garage or the thing that protects your second largest purchase, your much-needed car.
If your garage is integral to your house, your garage door is often the last line of defence that stands between burglars having the opportunity to work unnoticed in gaining access to your home. So maybe you should pay some attention to that old garage door, maybe you should take your garage door security seriously.
Unfortunately, no matter how many extra locks you fit to your existing door, it may not increase the security enough as some older door types are made from low gauge steel and are so flimsy that an intruder could peel the door open like a tin of beans. Older locking latches can easily be released from the outside with a screwdriver in a matter of seconds.
Even a solid door is only as good as the frame it is fitted to, so if this has started to rot or rust then these can be forced relatively easily.
So what are your options? What’s the easiest way to secure your garage door?
In all honesty, a new garage door is the only complete solution and although basic up and over garage door design has improved over the years, sectional garage doors and roller garage doors are increasingly popular because of their superior security benefits.
How to Choose a Garage Door with the Right Level of Security for You
Sectional and Roller Garage Doors offer the best security currently available for domestic garages. Hormann, Carteck & Novoferm Sectional doors come with TUV approval which is a stringent German product testing house.
Seceuroglide roller doors are available with the Excel upgrade which gives you the UK Police & Insurance ‘Secured by Design’ approval.
If there isn’t the headroom for a sectional or roller door then a good quality up and over door is the next best choice. Garador & Hormann offer the best security when it comes to these as they have rigid locking bars rather than flimsy cables. They also offer the option of upgrading from 2 to 4 point locking on doors up to 3048mm wide.
If you are going for an up and over door, it is definitely a good idea to have it with a factory steel frame as these give a tighter seal between the door and the frame than a timber frame. This will reduce the risk of the door being levered open.
With any of the above options it’s a good idea to fit the frame behind the brickwork opening, this will not only give you a better drive through width but will increase the security as there are no gaps to lever the frame off the brickwork.
Garage Door Sizes To Consider During Construction
After a new home or garage is built, it’s too late to think about which garage door sizes are going to work best for your family. Assuming that a standard sized door is going to be right for you can be a serious mistake, because once you’ve made that decision, it will take thousands of pounds of remodeling to unmake it. It’s difficult to understate the advantages of an over sized garage.
Even if you’re currently driving a single VW Golf and little else, you need to look further down the line. Standard garage doors run seven feet by seven feet — you might fit a normal medium-sized car in there without a problem, but what if you have a family before you move out of the house? A standard garage door is going to be tough to deal with in a people carrier or a 4×4 vehicle. Similarly, if you need something to be delivered to your home, an 8-foot clearance just isn’t enough for an everyday pickup truck with, say, a normal piano or a decently-sized bookshelf in the back.
On the other hand, if you work with your architect and builder beforehand, you’ll find that it’s not terribly expensive to add a foot to the width of your garage, and you’ll have a lot more options if you have a nine-foot garage door. A 4×4 with luggage or a canoe on the top wouldn’t make it through the normal garage door sizes, but an extra foot will make all of the difference. Eight feet might be a bit tall for some people to open and close by hand, but that’s why we have automatic garage door openers.
If you own a utility trailer or a boat, you know from experience that they are usually significantly wider than the car or van you tow them with — sometimes close to nine feet wide! Unless you think ahead and take the possibility that you’ll end up with one of these items into consideration during construction, you’ll have to leave your pretty toys out in the elements.
Anyone who has to back a trailer of any size into a garage will be grateful for the extra width of a 10- or 12-foot wide door. Also, widths of 14 feet and over are invaluably important if you have multiple cars, especially if they are both expensive, as it prevents dings and mirror bumping.
Talk to your builder and/or architect about designing an over sized garage and the effect that it will have on your life in addition to it’s value to the home. Even if you never use the garage for anything special, the larger garage door sizes will help add curb appeal and interest to anyone looking to buy your home in the future. The cost might seem like a bit up front, but the increase in your property value could be substantial. This is particularly true if your over sized garage comes equipped with high-end sectional garage doors, with insulation, weatherproofing, and automated garage door openers as well.
Garage Door Prices – The Ownership Cost
Garage door prices can be somewhat arcane to someone who doesn’t deal with them quite regularly. The price can vary because of a variety of elements, but there is a predictable range to look in. Don’t be fooled into thinking that a cheap garage door is a wise investment, though.
You really do get what you pay for when you get a garage door — a high-quality garage door will save you money in addition to being a beautiful accent to your home. The true ownership cost of a garage door depends on a lot of factors. How you plan to use the garage, the insulation value of the door, its wind rating, the ease of maintenance, the cost of repair, and more all play a role.
How Will You Use the Garage?
If you’re planning on storing your cars in the garage, your cost of ownership will be reduced (though if you have two or more vehicles, or over sized vehicles, the garage door sizes you need may play a big factor in the cost.) If you plan on storing things in the garage, you will need weatherproofing, which will drive up the initial and repair/maintenance costs. If you plan on using your garage as a workshop, you’ll also want an insulated door to keep your workplace from getting intolerably cold.
Insulation Value
We just touched on this idea, but it’s worthy of further examination. A garage door that leaks heat is going to cost you money any time you need to heat the garage. If your garage is attached to your home, this can represent a very real detriment to the overall U-value of your house.
On the other hand, if it’s not attached, then heating the garage becomes a job for inefficient and expensive radiant space heaters. Another factor to consider is that the larger garage door sizes will leak more heat than the smaller ones. Also, when it’s warm and the garage isn’t adequately ventilated, you may have to pay for cooling in the summer as well.
Wind rating
If you live by the sea it’s likely that you live in a high-wind risk area. Products that are rated for high-wind areas will obviously have higher garage door prices than unrated or lower-rated ones. Installing an ordinary door can put your home at extreme risk if you are hit by a severe storm. Home-engineering studies from the States indicate that one of the greatest storm risks to your home is the loss of a garage door — once the wind can get into your garage from the side, it causes a wind pocket to form that can easily rip off the roof. This is one expense you don’t want to skip out on!
Maintenance and Repair Costs
It’s just easier to maintain a steel garage door than it is to maintain a hardwood beauty or a paintjob on plywood. That said, if you live on the water, the danger of salt corrosion to any metal door is a serious consideration. Weatherproofed doors don’t require as much maintenance as the lifting gear is protected behind the sealed edges — in the long run these doors are much less pricey than a door that lets the weather in and then rusts or warps! Insulated doors also help to keep maintenance costs down by keeping the door’s machinery at a more stable temperature.
This is all about being a responsible homeowner and a wise consumer. You can see that investing a bit more money up front by paying high-quality garage door prices for a door that is appropriate to your environment and your personal needs is going to save you much more money in the long run than it could ever cost you up-front, so don’t take the risk!
Garage Doors – Know How Much To Pay
There are a lot of factors that play into the price of garage doors, much more than just the basic form and function of your garage doors. Just installing the door yourself can often reduce the price of a door by half or more! Similarly, the price of high-wind rated garage doors are much higher than the prices of doors without that rating. Garages with irregularly-sized apertures will require a custom door which will drive the garage door prices up even further.
Some typical garage door prices run in these areas:
£600+
An install-it-yourself average-rated 16′x7′ tilt-up plywood garage door that must be opened by hand. This type of door can be installed with the help of 2-3 handy people.
£700+
A new 16′x7′ tilt-up wood or aluminum door with outside plywood. Very lightweight, no rust – but aluminum garage doors dent easily and are hard to repair once dented. Self-installed.
£800+
A new 16′x7′ tilt-up aluminum door with professional installation.
£1000+
A new steel 16′x7′ door, sectional (as opposed to tilt-up), install-it-yourself. All doors from here on have automated opening ability. The less expensive, the more likely that you’re looking at single-layer doors; double-layer doors with foam insulation between the layers run toward the high end. With luck, you may find quality steel garage doors with weather-stripping and weather seals in this price range. Like aluminum, steel runs the risk of denting and is challenging to repair.
£1200+
A sectional roll-up insulated door, designed to be painted, with professional installation. This is what most people think of offhand when they think of ‘garage doors’.
£1300+
Professionally-installed, 16′x8′ high-quality steel door constructed of 2 steel panels with two inches of polyurethane foam and a pre-painted low-maintenance surface.
£1500+
A high-wind rated 16′x7′ door of the above quality, with professional installation.
£2000+
For the proud homeowner, a custom-built wood garage door falls in this price range. With it’s natural look and style, wood is a popular choice in garage doors. That said, they are high-maintenance, as age will cause them to crack and warp.
Prices will increase dramatically for odd-shaped garage doors that require custom sizes. Another major factor that will affect a garage door’s price is the brand name. Gadco, Cloplay, Delden, Genie, Amar, Wayne Dalton, Martin, Raynor, Cardale, Coachman, Hormann, Garador and many others all make garage doors, and their prices vary based on the specific needs and clients they serve.
Plainly, there are a lot of factors that go into pricing a garage door correctly. If you’re shopping for a garage door, and you don’t understand its price, feel free to contact us.
