Monday, June 16, 2008

Garage Doors

What's a garage without a door? Nothing. It's just not a garage anymore, is it?

By definition, all garages have garage doors, and this opens a wonderful lands of architects, houses builders and owners who are looking to create a personal living space to be proud of.

Garage doors have become very important elements of exterior house design: they have to match the facade, the lumber, the windows and the entrance door of a modern home. Besides all that, garage doors have to meet certain safety standards and easiness in operation. This is why some of the most wanted models are the ones with remote controls, so you can open the door directly from your car and get inside the garage pretty quickly. What you need to make sure, regardless the door of your choice, is to make a flood insurance for your garage and house in case you live in an extremely rainy area, or nearby a river. After all, no matter how strong it may be, a simple garage door cannot keep furious waters away and such damages caused by water with debris can be huge.

Types Of Garage Doors


Garage doors are mainly of four types:
  1. Up and over garage doors: as the name shows, this type of garage doors are provided with a mechanism which makes them tilt and slide, until they are parallel to the garage ceiling. They can be manufactured from materials such as wood, steel or even GRP. It seems this is one of the most popular models all over the world.
  2. Sectional garage doors: these are ones of the most convenient garage doors, as they are made of small sections which allow them to open vertically, thus being suitable even if you don't have too much space in front of your garage. They also allow the car to be parked very close to the door, due to those small sections which slide against each other, resulting in opening the door without needing any free space around it.
  3. Roller garage doors: this is a variety of sectional garage doors, where the small sections the door is made of are not aligning themselves towards the ceiling, but are rolled in a cassette which is placed inside the garage, just above the opening for the door.
  4. Side hung garage doors: these are like normal house doors, but only they are bigger, to let your car inside. When made of timber, such garage doors can be very elegant and they can give your house a very distinctive look.
In case you have just built your first garage, doors need to be carefully considered, and all aspects taken into consideration. If the look is most important above all others, then maybe a side hung garage door is the best for you. If your yard is very small and you can barely find any free space, then it is more important that you can open the door like in the sectional garage doors case.

Garage Doors Accessories


If you didn't know already, find out now that garage doors come with a variety of accessories such as the garage door openers, doorhandles and knobs, insulation rims or even windows. Buying a garage door is not like buying a light bulb or a new doormat, so it needs to be well documented.