When you choose to have an insulated garage door, you imagine that it is going to help you save on your energy costs. While these types of doors might seem similar from a distance, when you start to look a bit closer at what the door offers, and whether it has thermal breaks, along with top‑performing weatherseals, you will start to see a difference. If you do not happen to have a quality door with these features, it could mean that you are losing heat through the garage and increasing the cost of your electricity bill.
If you are at a point where you are ready to buy a new garage door, then you need to make sure you are considering the features that the door needs if you hope to find a reduction on your energy costs.
Choose wood end blocks
Great garage doors will have something called section end blocks, which help to keep the insulating material where it belongs. These blocks will also help to secure the hinges to the door. To help finish off the section and seal it, there will be weatherstripping and/or a glue joint that will help to link the interior and exterior metal sheets.
Many of the garage door manufacturers throughout North American utilize steel end caps for their doors. Even though this might be a common practice, it is certainly not the best practice. This will cause thermal bridging, which can allow the metal to move heat into or out of the garage.
At Garaga, the construction of the doors is different. It uses a different manufacturing method and injection, making each of the sections of the door individually. Wood end blocks are used because wood is not going to transfer heat. This thermal break ensures that the temperature is not transferred through the door.
Door section joints
With many of the garage door companies, the manner in which they attach the sheets of exterior and interior metal will cause yet another thermal bridge. They attach the sites with metal staples. This area will cause transfer of heat.
With the doors from Garaga, you will not have to worry about this. The sheets of metal are connected using a triple‑contact PVC weatherseal. This will ensure that the metal on the exterior and the interior do not touch, eliminating the possibility of a thermal bridge. This is what you want for better energy conservation.
Weatherstripping
Your garage door needs to have quality weatherstripping if you hope to keep your energy costs down. If you have a garage door that uses low quality weatherstripping, it is going to become extremely hard and inflexible when the temperature drops, and that is not going to provide a good deal. Garaga makes use of a TPE (Thermal Plastic Elastomer) based weatherseal for the bottom of the door. This will stay flexible down to ‑52°F (‑62°C). On the outside, we use quality double‑lipped weatherstripping that stays flexible even down to ‑15˚F (‑25°C).
Remember
As you can now see, there is far more to the energy efficiency of a garage door than just the R‑value. While it is true that this value is important to consider when you are buying a door, you also have to consider all of the other factors that we’ve discussed here. These are some of the biggest problems with so many garage doors out there that make them less efficient than they should be.
Now that you know what you need to look for, it should be much easier for you to find the perfect door that’s not only going to look good, but that will also help you keep down those energy costs.
You can Contact us toll‑free by calling 616-453-0164. We can advise you on the various door options available and help you find the door that is going to work best for your situation. In addition, we can provide you with a quotation.
You can also come into our showroom, so you can get a better look at the garage doors that are available. You might also want to visit the Design Centre to learn more about all of the different styles and see what might work well with your garage. Spend some time checking out the image gallery, which offers a wealth of interesting garage door examples that can provide you with some inspiration.
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