Your garage door is your pride and joy, your convenient entry point, your sunshine until a storm pays you a visit. Then, it may become a liability. Suddenly, the integrity of the entire house highly depends on the resistance of the garage door. If it’s a hurricane proof garage door or not. If it’s recently maintained and if some problems with the garage door tracks or the springs are fixed.
So, keeping the garage door resistant, ready to withstand storms, fully prepared to fight for you and your family requires some work on your part. So, what can you actually do? How can you make the garage door storm resistant?
Hurricane proof garage doors vs wind resistant garage doors
Making the garage door resistant and actually having a hurricane proof garage door are two different things. So, let’s get our facts straight from the beginning.
Hurricane garage doors are already tested for their resistance, are impact-rated, are approved to withstand wind pressure. And not all such doors are the same. No wonder you need to check the local building codes and see what you need. How much pressure should your overhead garage door resist, for example! Such things vary from one region to the next but overall, hurricane proof garage doors integrate all these elements required to protect a home – and are approved for them.
And so, if you were thinking of getting a garage door replacement pretty soon, forget retrofitting. It’s best to get the real thing, the best possible wind load garage door for your home, always in accordance with your local building codes. That’s the best thing you can do to really avoid structural damage in the event of the worse scenario.
So, how can you make the existing garage door resistant?
Assuming you are not planning a garage door installation any time soon but still want to make the door pretty resistant, there are some things you can do.
It’ll be helpful to remember that your goal is to make anything possible to keep the garage door intact should there be a ruthless storm.
And so, while adding strong aluminum braces for protection against the external pressure is paramount, replacing the old tracks and the brackets with new, heavy-gauge steel ones is equally fundamental. The tracks and by extension the brackets hold the overhead door in place. See them gone and the door will go too.
You also need good, new, strong garage door springs. You want them durable and resistant – also, lubricated so that they won’t rust. If they are not, they may break, especially if the storm finds the garage door in its opening position.
Are there garage door windows? Do you have any idea if the glass is resistant? Are these big or small windows? Narrowing the possibility of damage is done by investing in components and materials that can really hold the wind pressure and the impact (from flying objects).
How many precautions make you enough cautious?
In a nutshell, you need to be sure all major garage door parts are made of strong, low-gauge steel, are installed perfectly, can take the pressure. So, you need some serious changes to make along the addition of braces. Also, check the frame. If that’s rotten, it should also be replaced.
And remember. Such changes will make a tremendous difference to the resistance of the garage door, but you need to keep all such parts, components, and fasteners in tip-top condition. And so, garage door maintenance on a regular basis, fixing problems that may happen without delay both go a long away too.
