If you park your car in front of the garage, most likely, you just don’t want to open and close the gate once again. It turns out that the garage is empty in vain? It’s time to change the situation and… garage doors. Let’s figure out how to make the gate an obstacle for uninvited guests, and not for comfortable use of the garage.
Types of garage doors
Let’s first figure out what garage doors can be in principle, and what are the pros and cons of each design.
Swing doors
A familiar option for many is a swing gate. They are easy to manufacture, and therefore they are inexpensive and are considered reliable protection. However, there are nuances here. Reliability directly depends on the quality of materials, and the cheaper they are, the more vulnerable the gate is. So cheap gates have the appropriate resistance to hacking. For some garage owners, it is captivating that swing gates can be made independently.
Positive. The swing gates have a simple design, they are affordable, diverse in design. In one of the flaps, you can make a door. It is possible to choose a size within 6 m.
Minuses. But they have much more minuses than pluses. It takes a lot of space to open the swing gate flaps. In winter, it is necessary to constantly clear the area in front of them and prevent the formation of ice, which may even block the opening of the shutters. In addition, the doors can be very heavy, and it is quite difficult to make them aesthetically interesting.
It is possible to justify the presence of such gates in the garage of a private house only by the love of systematic physical exertion in the fresh air. But let’s be honest – this is just an excuse. If you decide to install automation on double-leaf swing gates, then you will have to purchase two separate drives, which significantly increases the cost of the system. In the conditions of modern life, when time is the main value, swing gates in the garage are a luxury available only to those who have plenty of time. The rest either change the gate or park the car in front of the garage.
Lifting and turning
In fact, it is a single canvas that rises and turns when opened. When open, it is fixed horizontally under the ceiling. It can be opened manually or by means of an electric drive. When closed, the canvas is buried inside the opening. In order to ensure tightness at the junction with the site in front of the gate, a threshold of about 3 cm high is required.
Positive. Lifting and turning gates in the open state do not take up space. They are affordable. There is no need to constantly clean the snow in front of him, they can be supplemented with a gate or window.
Minuses. As a rule, such gates have a standard size of 2.2 x 6 m. When opening, the departure of the canvas is about 1 m, so the car can not be parked close to the garage. And, according to the well-known “law of meanness”, sooner or later someone violates this rule, and the car suffers.
Rolled garage doors
Such gates consist of lamellae, which, when opened, are twisted into a roll and fixed above the opening in a special box. The thickness of the lamellae, as a rule, does not exceed 2.5 cm. If you make them thicker, then in the twisted state they will take up a lot of space, and in the process of opening they can “wedge”.
Positive. Such gates are light in weight and do not require space to open. The car can be parked right next to them. Daily cleaning of the area in front of the garage is also not necessary.
Minuses. It is impossible to make a gate in a rolled canvas. Due to their small thickness, they have low sound and thermal insulation. It is believed that roll gates are inferior in reliability in comparison with other types of gates. But there is a nuance here: burglar resistance largely depends on the quality of materials. Sometimes “trouble-free” swing doors can be opened in a couple of minutes.
Sectional doors
They consist of several sections (panels) connected by a hinge mechanism. On the sides there are special rollers that ride along the guides installed on the edges of the opening and on the ceiling. The sections rise vertically upwards and are fixed directly under the ceiling in a horizontal plane. When opening the gate, it does not require additional space in front of the garage, but the thickness of the sections can be quite large – up to 45 mm.
Positive. Such gates open both manually and automatically, they retain heat well. You can make a window or a gate in them. Sectional doors work almost silently, have a smooth running. They are resistant to mechanical influences: you will not have to repair them if the child hit the goal with a ball or hit a bicycle. You can choose the right size both in width and height, different exterior design. Perhaps, today sectional doors are the best option for a warm garage or workshop.
Minuses. Perhaps it is only one – it is a complex repair. But whether you have to repair such gates or not depends on their quality. Therefore, let’s consider what the indicators of strength and reliability of sectional doors consist of.
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