In the bitter cold weather we’ve been facing, how does your garage door perform? If your garage is attached to your house, you’re well aware of the fact that a properly-insulated garage door matters when it comes to minimizing air flow and being successful at keeping the warm air in. It does not take long for the warm air that you’ve paid for to escape through a large opening such as your garage.
One term you may be aware of if you’ve ever shopped for a new garage door, is “R-Value”. The definition of R-value is a measure of resistance to heat flow through a given thickness of material. The higher the R-value, the greater the resistance. A simple way to think of it is that you want to keep the warm air that you’ve already paid to heat, inside your garage. You want to keep it from escaping outside, and that’s why the level of insulation you select in your garage door matters.
Overhead Door Corporation recently shared three benefits to having a properly-insulated garage door:
Save Energy
Your garage door is ultimately the barrier between your home and the winter weather outside. Studies have shown that replacing an uninsulated garage door with an insulated one can reduce heat loss through the garage by more than 70 percent, especially if the walls of your garage are insulated. Insulated garage doors will block cold air from entering your garage and keep the warm air inside using polyurethane insulation and sealed air gaps.
Protect Your Tools
Freezing garage temperatures can damage your vehicles and anything else you might be storing inside. Tools or appliances with water in them such as a power washer can freeze and crack, ruining the equipment. The same is true of fuel gels. These can “gel up” inside the engine of your lawn mower and destroy a very expensive piece of machinery.
Extend Your Car Battery Life
A car battery is most reliable between 30 and 90 degrees, so an insulated garage door could be the difference between a working or a dead battery.
Keep in mind that there are differences in the types of insulated garage and overhead doors that are available and on the market today. The differences are not only in the types of insulation that are used, but also in how the door is constructed. Some doors use polystyrene to insulate. When polystyrene is used, it is secured in place with an adhesive. These doors generally have a steel or vinyl back (steel is stronger).
Another material that is used for insulating overhead doors is urethane. For an overhead door that is insulated with urethane, the material is blown in when the door is built. These doors usually have steel on both sides of the door and don’t allow for gaps between the steel and the insulation, which you can encounter with a polystyrene insulated door.
Ask your overhead door professional to show you the difference in price when comparing a garage door insulated with urethane versus polystyrene. Often times the increase in investment is not as much as you might think. Not to mention the differences consumers experience such as sturdiness, heat and energy efficiency, etc. are great benefits from purchasing and installing an insulated garage door.
Stop into our garage door showroom to learn more about your choices when choosing a garage door that is right for you or fill out the Request A Free Estimate form on our website.
