New door and installation
Measured in your garage, quoted in writing, and only after we have told you honestly whether the door you have is worth keeping.
A lot of doors that feel finished are three hinges, ten rollers and a correctly wound spring away from being fine for another decade. We will tell you which yours is, and it costs you the call-out either way.
Width and height of the opening, headroom above it, backroom behind it, and the sideroom at each jamb. Those four numbers decide which track and which spring arrangement your garage can physically take, and they get measured before anything is quoted.
When a new door is genuinely the answer
- The end stiles are twisted. Once the vertical steel at the ends of a section has been bent, the geometry of the door is gone and no amount of hardware fixes it.
- The sections have separated or rusted through from the inside. Common on older single-skin steel doors in Florida, starting at the bottom section where water and grit sit.
- The profile is no longer made. One replaceable section is a repair; three sections that have to be sourced from three places is a new door with extra steps.
- You want the garage to stop being an oven, and the door is single-skin steel with no insulation at all.
The four measurements
Headroom is the space between the top of the opening and the ceiling. Standard torsion hardware wants about twelve inches. If you have less, that does not mean no door — it means low-headroom track, or a jackshaft opener mounted on the wall beside the door instead of a motor on a rail.
Backroom is how far the horizontal track can run back into the garage: roughly the door height plus a couple of feet, more if the opener is on a rail.
Sideroom is the clear space at each jamb for the vertical track, normally around four inches. A wall that is not square eats into this in ways that only show up on installation day if nobody measured.
All four get measured in your garage. Quoting a door from a photograph is how a truck arrives with hardware that will not fit.
Insulation, and the number to ask about
Doors are sold with an R-value, and the number on the brochure is not always measured the same way. Some manufacturers publish a calculated value for the insulating core alone; others publish a tested value for the whole assembled section including the steel skins and the joints between sections. The second number is always lower and it is always the useful one. Ask which one you are being quoted — the question itself tells the salesman what kind of customer he has.
In this climate the honest position is that insulation matters most when the garage is attached, has a room above it, or gets used for something. On a detached garage it does much less than the brochure implies.
The other reason to buy an insulated door has nothing to do with heat. A sandwich section — steel, insulation, steel — is far more rigid than a single skin, so the door flexes less, rattles less, and stays straight for longer.
What we quote, in writing
- The door: make, model, size, gauge of steel, insulation and its rating, color and finish, windows if any.
- The hardware: track type, roller type and bearing count, hinge set, and the spring — including its cycle rating, in writing, on the quote, before you order.
- Whether the existing opener is being reused, and if so what condition it is in and what we expect of it.
- Removal and disposal of the old door.
- The deposit, what it covers, and what happens to it if the order is canceled.
Wind load
Florida has requirements for garage doors in a windstorm, and the garage door is the largest opening in most houses — the one that decides whether the wind gets in and lifts the roof from underneath. A rated door is rated as a system: the sections, the track, the bracing struts and the fixings into the jamb, together. Leaving out a strut because it rattles, or fixing to a jamb that is not sound, quietly undoes the rating even though the label on the stile still says otherwise. We will tell you what the door is rated for and what the fixing requires.
The numbers that decide the door
Width and height of the opening, the headroom above it, the backroom behind it, and the side room on each jamb. Those four numbers decide whether a standard radius track fits, whether you need low-headroom hardware, and where an opener can go.
Then the weight of the door decides the spring, and the spring gets written down: wire size, inside diameter, length, wind direction and cycle rating. The next person to touch it should not have to guess.
What it costs
- Measure and written quote
- No charge if you are replacing the door. If you want a condition report on the existing door instead, that is the standard call-out.
- Non-insulated steel, single
- Quoted per opening. Price moves with size, gauge, color and whether there are windows.
- Insulated sandwich section
- Quoted per opening, with the tested R-value stated, not the calculated one.
- Hardware
- Every quote states the spring cycle rating and the roller bearing count. If a competitor's quote does not, ask.
- Removal and disposal
- Included, and stated on the quote so it is not a surprise line at the end.
Example figures on a demonstration site. They are the shape of real pricing — a call-out plus parts — not a quote from anybody.