Ensure Better Safety For Your Car With Electric Car Doors
Garages are a fantastic addition to any home and offer you a variety of different uses. Naturally, their primary use is protection of your car. When your vehicle is enclosed safely within your garage behind a locked door, it is safe from vandalism, theft, as well as from damage from the elements. However, a garage also offers storage for a variety of other items such as DIY tools and assorted miscellaneous items if your attic or cellar is too crowded already. Electric garage doors are an exercise in convenience and security and are the perfect addition to your garage. With a simple click of a button, a metal shield will gently scroll down, ensuring that everything behind it is safe and sound.
Crime statistics seem to indicate that the garage is the most likely place to be burgled. This is because it can be entered in a more clandestine manner than a house as there is no one living in there. Generally, garages don’t have alarms so a thief can easily get in and out without being noticed. If they encounter only token resistance in the shape of an old door, then it will be far too easy for them to break in. You may as well leave a ‘welcome’ sign for a thief with such a lack of protection. However, if they see that your house has been fitted with a roller garage door, then they are likely to move on to the next house because overcoming such a barrier is beyond the skills of most criminals. They are looking for a quick in and out job and an electric garage door is a severe impediment to their progress.
The best roller garage doors will have an automatic lock feature. This gives your home and garage extra protection as it makes it just about impossible for a thief to break in. Despite the name, if the electricity goes out, the door will not cease to work. Rather, it should have a security lock pre-installed that will activate immediately in the event of a power failure. Also, electric garage doors have the ability to detect if someone if near the door and will not close if this is the case. This gives peace of mind as you know nasty accidents will not occur.
Not only will you be able to open the door from the comfort of your car, no one else will have the ability to break the door’s code. Every single roller garage door has a completely different security code so no one else with a similar door can enter your domain. This is also exceptionally useful when dealing with young children. They will not be able to gain access to the garage without your permission. So their little hands will be kept away from the car and any dangerous tools you may have inside your garage.
So enjoy the security and convenience of having an electric garage door. They will prove to be an insurmountable obstacle for any burglar to bypass, they continue to work even when there is a power failure and you have complete control over who enters your garage.
Roller Garage Doors
Roller Garage Doors – 5 Points to Ponder
When you’re designing a new home, it’s almost a sure thing that you’ll be designing a garage to go with it — and there are a lot of reasons to look at roller garage doors to provide the perfect finish to your new carport. One of the most popular brands for roller garage doors is Hormann. Hormann produces industrial and residential doors of all kinds, but they have a huge variety of roller garage door models that are beautiful and house-worthy. That said, before you ask your contractor for a Hormann and go out picking the best-looking one with your new home’s paint job, there are a few things to think about.
Climatology
If you live near the sea, salt in the air can damage some metal doors. Similarly, if you live in a place with significant temperature or humidity fluctuation between winter and summer, a wood door can warp and distort over the years. Fiberglass doors can crack easily at very low temperatures. Essentially, it pays to talk to an expert about what kind of roller garage door will work best in your environment.
Security
Similarly, some garage door materials are more tamper-proof than others. Some metal garage doors come with locking plates that essentially mimic a solid metal panel when the door is closed, making your garage door a very difficult point of entry for a burglar. Some cheap wooden garage doors are thin enough that they can be kicked through. Take your neighborhood into account when deciding what kind of door will be best for you.
Space
Roller garage doors are the most space-efficient kind of garage doors, but that doesn’t mean you should just run with whatever you end up with. A little forward thinking (and measuring tape), and you can avoid several problems ranging from setting up storage around the movement of your garage door to having a unit that hangs too low for your tallest car.
Features
It’s important to keep in mind what features will most benefit you. If you’re forgetful, you might want a keypad entry option. If you have pets or children, you will want the auto-reverse option. If you plan to use your garage as a workspace, you will want windows in your garage door (for some natural light).
Aesthetics
When you do finally head off to get the best-looking garage door for your home, bring some elements of home with you. Whether it’s pictures of the detailing on the window shutters or a paint swatch from the weathervane on top of the garage, a startling amount of thought can — and should — go into creating the perfect match between garage and home.
Once you’ve thought everything through carefully, you’ll be ready to talk to your contractor or go through your Hormann garage door catalogue and select the perfect roller garage door for your home — don’t accept anything less!
Electric Garage Door Opener
Get a Roller Garage Door with an Electric Garage Door Opener
An electric garage door opener is a huge boon to any household and some businesses, but they don’t work on all garage doors. Many garage doors are of the one-piece variety: a massive panel of wood or metal that simply rotates upward when opened. Electric garage door openers don’t work on one-piece doors; they must be used on roller garage doors. These kinds of doors are made up of many small panels that allow the door to travel around a smaller corner as it is raised and lowered.
There are many benefits to having a roller garage door, and they are only multiplied when you add an electric garage door opener.
Security
Like any other door, roller garage doors prevent easy access to your home through the garage. Roller doors are much harder to cut through than one-piece doors, making them slightly more secure than a single panel.
Weatherization
The garage offers protection to your car, not only from other people, but from the elements. With a weather-sealed roller door on your garage, your car will stay dust- and bird-dropping free as well as staying closer to room temperature, making a cold morning startup a much more efficient process.
Space
Roller doors offer much more space efficiency than single-panel doors. Both in terms of allowing a taller vehicle and in allowing you to maximize storage space in your garage, a roller door is the way to go.
Stability
Roller garage doors need no counterbalancing mechanism, meaning that there’s no chance of the mechanism failing and the door closing unexpectedly. Once it’s in the up position, gravity actually helps keep it in place rather than encouraging it to fall.
Electric Garage Door Opener
Roller doors can be automated with an electric garage door opener. This is perhaps the most significant advantage of a roller garage door, because it opens the path to many other advantageous elements:
Convenience
The obvious: when it’s snowing, or hot, or rainy, or you are just plain tired, an electric garage door opener allows you to get the door open from the comfort of your vehicle and without strain.
Safety
If your driveway is poorly lit, it can be dangerous to stumble about in the dark to open your garage door. Similarly, the lights on an automated garage door opener guarantee that your garage is never too dark to navigate when you finally get home.
Access
Most decent electric garage door openers come with keypad entry, so even if you don’t have your house keys and your remote is out of batteries, you always have a safe way to get inside. You might want to look at the Seip electric operators.
Comparing the cost of decent roller garage doors and electric garage door openers with the benefits of owning and using them, the analysis is clear: if you own a garage, you should own a roller door and an electric opener. If you’re having trouble deciding where to find the right roller door and electric opener for you, check out the Hormann garage doors offered here at the Garage Door SuperStore.
Roller Garage Doors for the Home
Roller garage doors are a popular item to add to the home. The days of manually opening your garage door when leaving or returning home are over, thanks to this nifty invention and the craftsmanship of Hormann. Why spend another day manually opening your garage door when you can install something far more convenient?
Roller garage doors are a type of automated garage door that you can open and close electronically through a wireless remote. You can also open an automated garage door through a pad installed in the garage. Hormann is a leader in the garage door industry and has a line of roller garage doors that fit into just about any application.
The door of the moment is the Hormann RollMatic door. This automated garage door is a described by Hormann as the sectional door that rolls up. It rolls up into a nice secure position as you drive into your garage, and rolls right back down behind you when you instruct it to do so. This not only adds convenience into your life, but also safety. With roller garage doors, there is no longer a need to leave the safety of your vehicle when you come home.
So an automated garage door runs off of electricity; what happens in the instance of a power outage? While this may seem like a real problem, it really is easy to deal with. When it comes to Hormann roller garage doors, this is not a problem at all. One of the features Hormann installs in their garage doors is a quick release that you can pull to disengage the roller door from the motor. When you do this, you can then easily lift the door manually to get in and out of the garage.
There is no need to second guess safety when it comes to a door made from this well-known manufacturer. In the Hormann roller door, there are tension springs as well as dual cables which offer a strong hold for years. Even in the event that you may have to manually open the garage door; these features make it much easier to do so. In many roller garage doors, a separate hand crank is needed to open and close the door manually, but with this type of door from Hormann, you just lift into place.
Maintenance is something to take into consideration when choosing which automated garage door is right for you. If there are parts that are complicated or hard to get to, maintaining your garage door may be more of a hassle. With a Hormann roller garage door, the operating unit is located outside of the roller casing, which means that it is easy to get to and therefore easier to maintain through the years you use it.
Owning an automated garage door is something that every homeowner deserves. Because life is hectic, we need to do what we can to add convenience where possible. Simple as it may seem, convenience at home can come in surprising packages. The package referred to here is an easy to operate automated garage door. Convenience and added safety are very much worth the time and expense of adding a new garage door.
Going Green With Garage Doors
Fortunately for the environment, “going green” in all aspects of life has become a bit of a trend in recent years. Though it may not be first in people’s minds when it comes to protecting the earth, garage doors can play an important role in keeping your home environmentally friendly. Whether you are thinking of replacing your garage doors, building a new house, or just trying to be environmentally trendy, this article gives good tips for “going green” with garage doors. Lots of different factors affect the level of environmental friendliness that a door holds. Different materials, levels of cost efficiency and insulation, and garage door prices are all very important when it comes to saving the world (and money for you!)
It’s All About the Material.
Okay, maybe not all about it… but the material garage doors are made of is very important to how environmentally friendly it will be. The most obvious step you can take in making garage doors environmentally friendlier is to buy one made of recyclable or renewable materials. The best example of this is wooden garage doors made of sustainably sourced timber, because wood is found in nature. Other materials are a toss-up. Some man-made materials can be recycled and some cannot. For example, some steel garage doors are made from recyclable materials, but some are not. A good way to make sure that your door is made of recycled material or will be eligible to be recycled in the future is to simply ask the company who makes it.
…And Energy Efficiency
Energy efficiency is determined by several different factors with garage doors. The most important one is how insulated the garage door is. This depends on what you use your garage door for. If you have a room above the garage that is heated or cooled in different seasons, it is much more important to conserve energy by making sure that the garage doors are properly insulated. Before you choose between garage doors, check their U-value. U-values indicate how good of an insulator garage doors will be. The lower the U-value, the better insulator it will be.
Beyond Choosing Garage Doors…
Make sure that the company that manufactures garage doors is being environmentally friendly in the processes that occur before you buy. The materials that companies use to coat garage doors and the way they dispose of waste will make a big difference in the eventual efficiency of the garage door. The most powerful statement to a business is your money—you can get started on your environmental friendliness by some simple research and choosing carefully where to spend your money.
Obviously, other factors beside environmental friendliness will come into play as you choose, such as garage door prices and sizes and curb appeal. However, if you are looking for a simple way to help the environment, think carefully about choosing garage doors. After all, after it’s installed, you will be helping the future of the earth without even thinking about it.
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.
The Best Way to Fit Your New Garage Door
There are two ways to fit a garage door, between or behind your structural opening but which is better?
Mounting the frame behind the opening will give you a wider drive-through width so it’s easier to get your car in and out of your garage. This is the standard option for roller doors and sectional garage doors although they can be fitted between the opening if necessaary, i.e. when there is no room internally to fix the frame legs.
The only disadvantage with a behind opening installation is that the internal depth of your garage is shortened which may only be a problem if you’ve got a particularly long car to park in it.
Traditionally up and over garage door frames are fixed between the structural opening which reduces the potential drive-through width by around 6 inches (150mm). The better thing to do is mount the frame on the face of the internal brickwork allowing enough of an instep for the door to comfortably swing through the opening as it opens without scraping on the brickwork. This is shown in the diagram below.
My recommendation is to always mount the door and frame on the back of the structural opening wherever possible as the wider the drive through width you give yourself, the better, to avoid any chance of damaging your car and garage door. The easiest and most secure way to do this is with sectional garage doors.
Garage Door Types Comparison Table
| Side Hinged Garage Doors |
|||||
|
Easy to automate?
|
Yes
|
No (except Cardale doors)
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes with converter bars
|
|
Good security
|
OK
|
Not bad
|
Very good – door held in C channel down each side | Very good – door held in C channel down each side |
Depends how many bolts are fitted
|
|
Materials available?
|
Steel, Timber, GRP, ABS
|
Steel, Timber, GRP, ABS
|
Steel, Timber, GRP, ABS
|
Steel or Aluminium
|
Steel, Timber, GRP, ABS
|
|
Draft proof?
|
No
|
No
|
Good (can also be insulated)
|
Good (can also be insulated)
|
No
|
|
Drive through width?
|
Frame needed – normally 75mm x 75mm | Frame needed – normally 75mm x 75mm | No frame needed mounts to rear of brickwork | No frame needed mounts to rear of brickwork | Frame needed – normally 75mm x 75mm plus the thickness of the door on each side |
| Space needed inside garage to accommodate the open door? |
The whole of the door height
|
Approx’ 2/3’s of the door height
|
The whole of the door height
|
varies: 200 x 200mm 300 x 300mm 450 x 450mm |
None
|
| Park on drive close to the door? | Approx 1m clearance required in front of garage | Approx 0.8m clearance required in front of garage |
Yes, no clearance required
|
Yes, no clearance required
|
Open outwards
|
Garage Door Buyer’s Guide Comparison Checklist
Here’s a quick and simple overview of the various garage door types, lifting mechanisms and materials available to help you quickly decide which door is best for you.
- Easy to fit – Good for DIY
- Maximum Width Available 8ft (2438mm) Wide
- Wide range of door designs available
- No horizontal tracks required
- Not suitable for automation, requires bow arm extension which reduces opening height. (Cardale canopy doors can use Autoglide operator which fits to the side frame and does not need bow arm).
- Door swings out when opening leaving 1/3 of door protruding as canopy.
Retractable Mechanism
- Ideal for Automation
- Wide range of door designs available
- Door is fully retracted when open
- Door swings out when opening
- Horizontal rails increase fitting time over canopy mechanism
- Easily Automated
- Insulation Option
- Low maintenance
- Weather-sealed
- High Security
- Ideal for short driveways and garages on the building line – Doesn’t swing out when opening
- Requires minimum 115mm headroom.
- Easily Automated, most come with automation as standard
- Insulation as standard
- Weather-sealed
- High Security
- Maximum Headroom
- Ideal for short driveways and garages on the building line – Doesn’t swing out when opening
- Limited design options
- Requires minimum 205mm headroom (Compact Version) or 300mm standard version.
- Traditional appearance
- Available in Steel, ABS (PVCu), Timber & GRP (Fibreglass)
- Awkward to automate
- Minimal Space Requirement Internally
Garage Door Materials
Timber
- Variety of attractive deigns
- Requires regular maintenance – staining
- Most Expensive Material
- Virtually maintenance free
- Realistic timber woodgrain effects available
- Insulation available
- Higher Cost
- Value for Money
- Huge variety of designs & colours available
- Robust
- Requires some maintenance
Plastisol Coating to Steel
- Low Maintenance finish to steel doors
- Cost effective alternative to GRP
- Dirt gets trapped in the woodgrain effect
- Cannot be repaired or re-touched if scratched or dented
- Low Maintenance
- Compliments UPVC Fascia & Soffits
- Only available in white
- No integral frame to door panel, therefore panel not as strong as other materials.
