It can be easy to forget or overlook doing regular maintenance on your garage door, but it is very important to make sure you spot and fix problems right away. When you keep your garage door properly maintained, you can save yourself a lot of money in the long term.
Prevent Costly Garage Door Repairs
The first way that maintaining your garage door saves you money is by helping you avoid having to pay for expensive repairs or complete garage door replacements. When you do regular checks and small repairs to things like a bent track, loose bracket, or malfunctioning motor, you avoid major breakdowns that are much more costly.
The cost of repairing a damaged garage door can be as expensive as $300 for larger garage doors or for expensive garage door openers. If you have to completely replace your garage door, the cost depends on the size, type, and materials. A decent single-car garage door will probably cost at least a few hundred dollars — and that’s not including the cost of installation if you pay a technician.
Prevent Damage to Your Garage’s Contents
There are a few potential breakdowns of your garage door that could cause damage to other things in your garage. If your garage door collapses onto your car, you have the cost to fix damaged windows or windshields, as well as fixing up any dents or damaged paint. Also if the track breaks off the wall because of a bent track or loose bracket, or if the torsion springs from your opener break, as they are normally very taut they can whip against the wall, your car, and other garage door and opener components.
Damage to your car can be expensive. A windshield or window that needs to be replaced can be anywhere from $150 to close to $1000. Repairs to any dents or chipped paint might not be as much, depending on the extent of the damage. Any other repair costs depend on what and how much was damaged.
Prevent Air Leaks Increasing Your Energy Bill
It might seem small in comparison, but when your garage door gets holes or worn weather stripping at the bottom, it creates an air leak to your garage. On hot and cold days of the year, any air leaks can affect the temperature of the rest of your home — unless the garage is not attached to the home. If it is, however, those air leaks can cause an increase to your energy bill due to your furnace and air conditioner working harder to compensate for the leak.
How much your bill increases depends on a lot of things: how big the air leak is, how efficient your furnace or air conditioner is, the cost of energy use in your area, and how hot or cold the temperature outside is.
About the Author
This is a guest post from Neb Aleksic. Neb is the Sales Manager at Doorcare, a company specializing in home and property improvement projects. He is an expert when it comes to residential garage doors and commercial overhead doors, dock levelers, automatic gates and accessories. Connect with Neb on Twitter.
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