A New Garage Door

Lately I have been sprucing up my thirty-year-old house with new siding, a new roof, and fresh paint.  It was also time to replace the old garage door with something that didn’t creek, sag, or flake off paint. 

I looked at the choices available to me in this area and decided to go with an Overhead Door product.  Not that Overhead is the cheapest product out there, but I already had been impressed by their Phantom door opener and I knew that the low clearance of my garage would be a real challenge.  Thirty years prior the local Overhead Door company had put in my old garage door, so I knew they could deal with installing a new one.

I decided to go with an insulated door since I obviously do a lot of work out in the garage.  I also wanted to get more natural light into the garage so I opted for a set of windows on the top section.  That would allow a lot of sun light in but would be high enough so prying eyes couldn’t scope out what was in the garage.

The big day came when the installers showed up.  They looked over the old door and track and decided that it would be best to re-use the old track since it was in fine shape and was configured to accommodate the low clearance required.

The first thing they did was to disconnect the cables and take the tension off the torsion springs.  The installers remarked at how well lubricated the torsion springs were.  Most garage door owners don’t take care of the springs by giving them a light coat of oil once in a while.  That shortens their life and makes it tougher for them to do their job.

Then they unbolted the door at its many hinges so that they could separate the sections of the old door and put them on their truck.  The old wooden door sections were obviously quite heavy and awkward.

With those out of the way they prepared the mounting of the new torsion springs and rods and set the new door sections on horses so that they could attach hinges and brackets to each section.

The first section was installed and then each section after that was set in place and the hinges were connected.  The torsion spring assembly was mounted and the last of the sections were put in place.

Then the springs were preloaded and the cables were attached.  The door was operated by hand a few times and minor adjustments were made.  Finally the opener was connected and the upper and lower limits were set.

My new garage door was complete and it gave the house a new look and the garage much better lighting.