OT What brand of garage door does everyone like?

Well I am going to be pouring cement this week and then starting to put up my steel building. One thing I haven't decided on for sure is a garage door. I am leaning towards Clopay. They seem to fit the budget and seem to have the best R value of any door maker. I have heard some bad things about Clopay but they seem to be more about their low end cheap doors. What brand does everyone suggest? Also I was told to buy a door 2" wider when hanging it in a steel building. Is this the correct thing to do?

I have a overhead door brand door. It has a very good r value. R-17 for a 2" sectional garage door. Metal lining on the inside as well.
Do you mean roll up door, or sectional door? (I think that is what a standard garage door is called)


Rob

What type of door? Rollup or sectional?

What price are you looking to pay? I just bought a insulated 10' x 9' tall door, with associated hardware for 975.00. Is is a commercial door that is manufactured in San Antonio, from Miner Company. We just installed 6 of these doors that were 14' x 12'. I like them so much I bought one for my shop addition.

My door was 10'2" wide.. Some I have seen are only 10'1" wide. Metal buildings have either no metal trim on the opening, just the red steel, or at most a thin piece of metal trim... Wooden framed openings usually have a 3/4" trim piece on each side of the opening..

we have clopay insulated doors on our building there about 6 years old now and we have had zero trouble. good American made doors

I am looking for a sectional door. And my budget is $1000 give or take for each door. I need one 10'wide by 7" tall and one 12" wide by 10" tall. I have heard home depot also offers another brand of door that has better track and hardware but they are about 3x the cost of a Clopay so they are out of the question.

" I need one 10'wide by 7" tall and one 12" wide by 10" tall."
Awfully tiny doors. But, easier to insulate!

I've had good luck with Wayne Dalton, overall.
I don't think they come close to R17/19, though... Sealing the air gaps is more than half the battle there.

Chip

bellinoracing said:

Also I was told to buy a door 2" wider when hanging it in a steel building. Is this the correct thing to do?

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I have installed many doors, but not in a steel building. In normal construction, you build your rough framing to have an opening the same size as the door. In your case, you may have to install 2x4s or 2x6s to frame the opening and have a place to attach the trim.

When the door and tracks are installed, the trim molding with the flexible strip goes outside the door to seal it. So for your doors, you need openings of 10' x 7' and 12' x 10'. (not sure if they make a 10' door that short, 8' is more common.)

The door I mentioned above is 16x7 and cost aprox $1700 a few years ago. It is insulated with solid urethane foam. The cheaper ones use styrofoam that is loose in the door space or a little better is styrofoam glued in with spray foam. I found the cost was proportional to the quality of foam insulation in the door.
This door is on my garage connected to the house, facing the sun. The good door keeps the garage temp cooler so less heat is in garage to migrate into the house.

Rob

If you have a good door vendor, they will ask you how it is framed and the exact size opening for width that way they spec out the correct hardware etc to hang it on your frame whether it be wood or metal. From what I understand, there is a range on the width of a door for every nominal width to work with your framing. When I called about mine, he told me he could get normal offerings in +/- a couple inches of the 14ft width I wanted, much beyond that 1 or 2 inches and it would be special order width.

I think most garage doors are made by Clopay, a lot of other brands are re-badged Clopay doors.

There is some info here

Clopay | Residential Garage Doors | Owners Manuals

and here

Clopay | Garage Doors | Residential Installation Overview

More or less the rough opening is the size of the door.

Aside, Clopay has at least one huge manufacturing facility in Troy Ohio, at exit 73 on I-75. I have passed it many times and regularly eat at a burrito place at that exit . Recommend it if you are looking for something other than the standard nationwide chain burger joints.

Don't forget about the garage door opener either. My recommendation is the Sommer brand if it is a sectional. It is the smoothest quietest garage door opener I have ever seen. My only complaint is sometimes it may even be too quiet in that if the thing hits something and goes back up you can't hardly hear it if you have already left. None the less the German made Sommer doesn't cost too much more then the Made in China junk ones but functions a ton better.

buy a common standard door and adjust the opening...... Its more important to get a good door guy who will respond when called than the highest r value. Raynors are always good, but expensive. I am not sure what brand the last 2 I had put in were, but my contractor did a good job, is local and responsive. Worst thing you can have is your shop wide open when a massive wind storm/ fork truck accident/ murphy's law event breaks your door and either a. you have something important inside you can't get out to send a bill, b. something important outside you can't get inside, or c. you can get out and in but can't lock the place up to go home.

I have Haas garage doors and am very happy with them. I believe they are the 600 series commercial doors. Best place I've found to buy them is Jon Nofziger @ Nofziger Door Sales in Plain City, OH. The first ones I bought locally, but my last one was from Jon, and the price was unbelievably great. I don't think they will ship them though and you need to pick them up in person.

I have a 14 x20' Delden Manufacturing Company - Garage door excellence since 1964. On my new shop. Works great, better than my overhead brand on old shop ever did.

For sectional-type doors mounted on steel jambs, the width of the door is 2" more than the opening width. eg: if you have a 10-0 wide opening, you'll order a 10-2 wide door. Standard (commercial) door widths are 10-2,12-2, and 14-2, and it's always better to stay with standard.

But...since door sections are roll-formed, the length of the panel is only limited by practicality and wind load. I once sold/installed a door that was 56 (fifty-six) feet wide and 2 (two) feet tall.

Door heights are a different matter. Normally, the sections come in 21" and 24" heights, so you can stack-up just about any height you need. There may be other section height options, so take a close look. A door can overlap the opening height, but doing-so can cause issues with outside lock/lift handle hardware and/or head weatherstrip.

If the door is over 12 feet high, I'd suggest you get a reduced-drive (as opposed to direct-drive) chain hoist and 3-inch track. IMHO, 3-inch track is the difference between a 10-year door life and a 50-year door life.

A standard door comes with 10,000-cycle springs - a cycle being any change in the door's position. Think about how often it will go up and down. It doesn't cost much more to specify a reasonably higher cycle life. For example, if you spec 100,000 cycle springs, you'll likely get upgraded to pillow block bearings.

One really important thing is to determine how much headroom you'll have. There's no such thing as too much headroom, but not enough is a real problem. Same goes with sideroom.

If you opt for an electric opener, you have two choices. The drawbar type (sometimes called "trolley") is good and positive and reliable. Downsides: 1) the door can be a pain to disconnect and operate in the event of power failure, and 2) it can destroy the top section.

Your other choice is a jackshaft type opener. A good jackshaft opener will have a floor-accessable disconnect with chain hoist backup operation.

When looking for doors, if the salesman doesn't walk you thru all the above, then he's not the right guy to be talking to. Ask the salesman if he recommends "pusher springs". If he does, don't walk from that dealership - run like Hell!

I don't see a lot of quality difference in the doors I've looked at lately. The key is to get a good installer. Even the highest quality product will self-destruct in short order if it's not installed properly. I don't know you...but with all due respect, if you install the door yourself, it will not be installed properly

Bear in mind that an electric opener is not a remedy for an improper door installation.

And lastly, like so many other things, a door is only as good as the availability of parts and service.

Well...that was long-winded

true temper said:

I have a 14 x20' Delden Manufacturing Company - Garage door excellence since 1964. On my new shop. Works great, better than my overhead brand on old shop ever did.

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The difference in the two doors could be several things: 2" track and rollers as opposed to 3"; 5 ball bearings in the rollers as opposed to 10 or 12 (many rollers are plastic and have no ball bearings); improperly-engineered counterbalance; and ***MOST IMPORTANTLY*** the quality of the installation.

There's a thousand ways to "cheap-out" a garage door.

It's kinda-like machine shop work - you get what you pay for.

There IS a difference between Clopay doors and Overhead doors. All this talk about R values, thickness of the doors is meaningless if they LEAK air. The seals on the sides of the door, and at the top are going to determine if your door has any hope of keeping your building up to temp. I have an Overhead door that's 12 foot wide and 11 foot tall on a south facing wall of my shop. I also have what I had hoped was the BEST Clopay door on the same south facing wall in another area of my shop.
The wind driven rain hits this wall pretty hard every winter. The Clopay door seems to have channels that accumulate this rain and when you OPEN the door, dumps water all over the shop when the door is opened. I have one panel with glass in it, just like the Overhead door. It's single pane glass, the Overhead door is double pane. I get air leakage between the panels in the Clopay door. The Overhead door has a much better interlocking joint and seals that keeps out air. The seal that's really supposed to keep out the air is the vertical seal on each side of the door. But if your door isn't smooth where the seal rides- air gets in. When they make the doors the actual detail of the door gives a depression in the metal right where the seal is located, so there's air leakage in two places on each panel. It's absolutely a stupid design, where they tout the R value of the panel, yet let AIR just leak in

So if I had life to live over, I would have been HAPPY to pay MORE for an Overhead door than I paid for the Clopay. Every winter I think what a crappy door the Clopay is, when I'm trying to keep warm, with air leakage in multiple spots. When I added on to another building, I paid more for an Overhead door. That's not saying I think they're great either- the side seals are the ONLY thing keeping the cold outside air out of your shop, and they're such marginal POS, I think the whole R value talk is lame, when you KNOW air leakage at the TOP of the door when it's closed and the side, negate any of the R value of the panel. Sealing the door is way more of an issue than the thickness of the panel. I have THREE Clopay doors, and Three Overheads, so I certainly have the ability to compare. Frankly they're ALL marginal, and if I could buy a door with well thought out side seals, I would. I almost want to make my own.

Another thing to look out for..... If the slightest hint of the merest possibility of mounting a good jackshaft type opener EVER crosses your mind you need to have the correct spring shaft mounted on the door. For your door sizes most doors come with a standard hollow shaft. Jack Shaft openers work by turning the spring shaft and the hollow shafts will twist and bend... We would have to remove the hollow shaft and install a solid shaft to install the opener and that was a lot of added expense compared to just installing the solid shaft first.

On the last lot of doors we installed they all came with shafts that were hollow but formed with a key shaft pressed the entire length. Made is strong enough for use with a jackshaft type opener....

Brian@VersaMil said:

There IS a difference between Clopay doors and Overhead doors. All this talk about R values, thickness of the doors is meaningless if they LEAK air. The seals on the sides of the door, and at the top are going to determine if your door has any hope of keeping your building up to temp. I have an Overhead door that's 12 foot wide and 11 foot tall on a south facing wall of my shop. I also have what I had hoped was the BEST Clopay door on the same south facing wall in another area of my shop.
The wind driven rain hits this wall pretty hard every winter. The Clopay door seems to have channels that accumulate this rain and when you OPEN the door, dumps water all over the shop when the door is opened. I have one panel with glass in it, just like the Overhead door. It's single pane glass, the Overhead door is double pane. I get air leakage between the panels in the Clopay door. The Overhead door has a much better interlocking joint and seals that keeps out air. The seal that's really supposed to keep out the air is the vertical seal on each side of the door. But if your door isn't smooth where the seal rides- air gets in. When they make the doors the actual detail of the door gives a depression in the metal right where the seal is located, so there's air leakage in two places on each panel. It's absolutely a stupid design, where they tout the R value of the panel, yet let AIR just leak in

So if I had life to live over, I would have been HAPPY to pay MORE for an Overhead door than I paid for the Clopay. Every winter I think what a crappy door the Clopay is, when I'm trying to keep warm, with air leakage in multiple spots. When I added on to another building, I paid more for an Overhead door. That's not saying I think they're great either- the side seals are the ONLY thing keeping the cold outside air out of your shop, and they're such marginal POS, I think the whole R value talk is lame, when you KNOW air leakage at the TOP of the door when it's closed and the side, negate any of the R value of the panel. Sealing the door is way more of an issue than the thickness of the panel. I have THREE Clopay doors, and Three Overheads, so I certainly have the ability to compare. Frankly they're ALL marginal, and if I could buy a door with well thought out side seals, I would. I almost want to make my own.

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In my mind, Clopay has always been crap. But make no mistake - Overhead Corp makes their fair share of crap as well.

None of the manufacturers make their own weatherseal - they all use the same stuff. You are correct in that the outside "skin" has a lot to do with how well the weatherseal performs.

Garage doors are inherently difficult to seal - we want it tight enough to seal yet loose enough to still go up and down. That's a tall order.

And throw this tidbit in the mix: The doors insulated with urethane foam (high R-Values) - the ones that have metal skins bonded to the insulation inside and out - are especially difficult to seal as the outside skin will expand/contract at a rate different than the inside skin. On hot days, the sections can bow enough to cause the top section to drag hard on the header - that means the entire perimeter weatherseal is expected to accommodate a gap that can be as much as 1".

The wider the door, the more pronounced the problem.

Edited to add: Re the water getting dumped - All doors have some sort of ship lap or tongue and groove joint between the section to prevent water intrusion. Maybe your door was installed upside down?

Don't laugh - I've seen it.