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Preventative Maintenance for Your Garage Door in Winter Climates

Snowy Garage - Gandert Door Co.

 Snow removal and winter damage is a serious possibility for your garage door. If you haven’t thought of it yet, here are a few tips for preventing expensive garage door repair related to snow and ice. 

 Avoiding piles of snow seems like a no brainer! Snow piles can cause damage to your garage doors threshold. Snow piles often include leaves, branches and other debris that can cause damage as the snow melts or is removed. This debris can weaken the integrity of your garage door’s threshold, which affect your door's energy efficiency as well as potentially damaging your garage door.

 Ice can potentially cause the worst damage to your door's threshold that can potentially turn into a domino effect of damage. When you go to open your garage door with ice formed to the threshold, the opener then must work overtime to pull the threshold away. This extra effort can cause your garage door to pull out of alignment and premature the garage door’s age. Even worst ice can fully prevent your garage door from raising all together, which leads to door opening mechanisms to overheat. There’s an easy solution: Take measures in removing ice from your door’s threshold prior to opening and closing the door.

Clearing your doors threshold can save you a lot of money in the long run! When snow has formed with your garage door open, clear it away before closing the door. If you try to close your garage door prior to clearing the door’s path, you may find that the door will not reach the threshold, this will engage the door’s reversing mechanism and will not allow the door to close. There is the possibility of damaging the door to where it does not reopen after landing on the pile of snow. Either way, we would highly recommend clearing any pile of snow prior to closing your garage door.

To help with insulation and keeping your garage clean and dry, most garage doors have weather stripping installed along the bottom and sides. Inspect the weather sealing for any cracks or broken off pieces. If you notice any damages, we recommend replacing the weatherstrip prior to harsh weather conditions. 

 At least once a year we recommend lubricating the metal parts of your garage to prevent rust and wear that could interfere with its performance. Apply a silicone-based lubricant designed for use on garage doors to the axles, rails, springs rollers and hinges after cleaning any dirt or debris. If you have a chain- or screw-drive opener, lubricate its metal parts as well.

 We advise to start with a visual inspection of your garage door. If you notice any damages to the weather stripping or mechanical components of your garage door call our professionals at Gandert Door to schedule an appointment for garage door service. For scheduling, you can call us at 419-529-2002 or visit our website for more information! 

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Location: Mansfield, OH, USA

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