Dealing With Garage Door Gaps
Posted on: 6 June 2017
Gaps at the bottom of a garage door represent a significant problem for many people--especially those with climate-controlled garages. Yet such gaps don't just hurt your energy efficiency, but they also allow unwanted critters to get into your garage. For both of these reasons, it is important to attend to garage door as quickly as possible. If you would like to learn more about what this entails, read on. This article will discuss how to seal a garage door gap safely and effectively.
Gap Basics
A gap between the bottom of a garage door and the floor can have several different causes. For one thing, the door itself may have become out of level. In that case, your best bet is to contact an experienced service professional. In other cases, it may be that the bottom panel of the door has begun to sag. This is generally a sign that the door is getting on in years and will soon need to be replaced.
In the majority of the other cases, however, the problem is directly tied to what is known as settling. This may mean one of two things: either the garage's framing or the floor itself has begun to sink and sag. The result of this is that gaps and uneven spaces begin to form between the door and the floor.
Weatherstripping
Garage door manufacturers recognize that settling is a common phenomenon, and that achieving a perfectly level garage door is a difficult feat in any case. For these reasons, almost all fiberglass and metal garage doors contain a special retaining channel along their bottom edge. This channel allows flexible weatherstripping to be added to the bottom of the door. The idea is that, because this weatherstripping is capable of being compressed, it will effectively fill in any gaps present between door and floor.
Chances are your garage door already contains weather stripping along its bottom edge. Yet your current weatherstripping simply may not be fat enough to accommodate the size of the gap. It may also have become overly compressed with age, so that it no longer has the ability to eliminate uneven gaps.
Styles
It is important to realize that there are two main types of garage door weather stripping. The first is what is known as a bulb seal. Such weatherstripping has a tubular structure, with a T-shaped ridge along its top edge. This ridge is designed to slide into a groove on the bottom of the door. The other type of weather stripping is shaped like the letter U; the garage door thus has two channels into which the stripping slides. Before investing in new weatherstripping for your door, be sure to know which type you will need to buy.
Contact a dealer, like Automatic Door Company, for more help.
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