How Long Will Your New Garage Doors Last?

Before installing a new garage door it is worth stopping to consider likely maintenance issues and at what point repairs might become necessary.

Many folk simply don’t realize that there is much more to keeping doors in good order than simply taking care of the surface finish. The opening mechanism in particular needs to be properly maintained in order to stay in good working order.

It’s easy to overlook the fact that the door panel itself, because it is the largest and most obvious part, is just one of many parts. Garage door opening mechanisms hold quite a few parts (springs, rollers, etc.) that need to all function smoothly together otherwise the door will cease to open and close correctly.

At the end of the day, a garage door can be only as reliable as its weakest part and failure of even a small part can easily compromise the integrity of the whole door. So what then is the likely meantime to failure of a garage door component?

The longevity of garage door parts is rated in “cycles” where a cycle is a single opening and closing action. The number of cycles that might occur each day will clearly vary since some folk seldom use their garage door while others might use extensively, especially if it serves as an alternative main entrance.

A reasonable approximate average is 3 cycles per day which equates to about 1,000 cycles each year. Cheaper garage door components are typically rated to last 5,000 cycles which obviously gives an average limit of five years before repairs will be required.

So you can quite simply calculate roughly how long you’ve got before you start asking around for recommendations for a garage door repair specialist according to your own specific usage patterns.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. By simply insisting on having only parts tested to 80,000 cycles without failure (they stop testing at that point) you should expect that your new garage door will operate flawlessly for literally a lifetime.

Find out more from this article that looks in particular at solid garage doors.