Gone With The Wind: 3 Ways To Strengthen Your Automatic Garage Door
If you live in an area prone to hurricanes and tornadoes, you know the devastating effects that high winds have on homes and businesses. If your home has an automatic garage door, you want it to be strong enough to not just stay attached to the house, but for other reasons as well. Your garage door acts as a barrier of protection against any debris the wind can hurl into your garage. Imagine road signs, palm fronds and even wooden fencing turning into missiles. It also prevents the wind from creating a destructive lift in your garage and damaging or destroying the entire structure.
Install Reinforced Struts
An ordinary garage door will bend and break in strong winds, especially hurricane-strength winds, rendering it useless to protect your home. Depending on your needs, you can install steel struts or stiles along the top and bottom of the inside of your garage door to reinforce it, as well as one for each door section. These struts do not interfere with the operation of your door and can be left on permanently rather than removing them after each storm. Most types of struts do not add too much weight to your door, but if you install several you may need to consider replacing your garage door spring with a stronger one.
Add A Vertical Post System
When you receive warning of a hurricane or other strong winds, part of your storm preparedness can include adding a vertical post to the interior of your garage door. A vertical post acts as an extra brace for the door. This system consists of a vertical steel post that runs down the center of the door. After dropping it into place through a series of brackets, simply clip the top of the post to the door header, and the bottom to the floor of the garage. When the storm has passed, you only unclip the post, slide it out of the brackets, and store it away.
Additional Hardware
Another way to strengthen your garage door is to change out all your hardware for heavy duty or special wind load versions. This includes the track brackets overhead and on either side of the door, and all hinges attaching the rollers to the door. Even the garage door rollers can be swapped for special rollers with end shafts that are threaded and nutted to stop them from sliding out of their hinges during high wind speeds.
By installing reinforced struts, adding a vertical post system, and upgrading the hardware on your garage door openers, your garage door will be better able to protect your home from strong winds. Talk with a company like Raynor Door Company for more advice.
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