Garage Door Beauty is more than Skin Deep

Mar 18, 2014

The recent winner of Clopay’s Foto-Finish Friday contest proves this old adage is true, especially when it comes to garage doors.

Despite being damaged, we thought the original garage door fit the style of this house perfectly. So we wanted to know why this Wisconsin homeowner made the decision to replace his entire garage door.

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The homeowner replaced an un-insulated garage door with Clopay’s Coachman Collection Design 11, REC14 windows in white.

Come to find out there is an interesting buyer-beware story behind this makeover and the best way to tell it is in the customer's own words. Here is his e-mail to us.

"Prior to the damage in the before photo, our old garage door may have appeared nice from the street. In reality, it was anything but that. The best way to describe it is ‘junk’. It was un-insulated, cheaply made, loud, never sealed correctly around the perimeter, cold in the winter, hot in the summer…I could go on and on.

The damage occurred when two of the hinges that connect the top panel to the second panel broke. The opener still worked because the tin foil panels bent before the opener torqued out. What you see in the photo is what we were left with.

Why do builders not hesitate to spend several thousand dollars on a front door and then install a junk garage door for a few hundred? No one even uses the front door and the garage door has five times the surface area as the front door.

Instead of replacing it with another junk door, we decided to address all of the things we disliked about it. That is what led us to Joe Wilde Companyand the insulated Clopay Coachman Collection garage door. The best way to describe it is AWESOME. Now everything is right. All of the issues have been resolved with this new garage door.

The Coachman is:

- Quiet in the wind (we just had 50+mph and no door noise)

- Operates smoothly (cannot even hear it going up and down when in the car or house)

- Warm in the winter (now using less gas to heat our garage)

- Seals correctly (keeping the wind and water out of the garage)

I am not taking the time to write this for a chance to win $100. I know the pictures don't do our situation justice. I'd just like to thank Clopay again for engineering and manufacturing this door. It is awesome!"
Andy A.
Wisconsin

Compare the construction of a non-insulated garage door to an insulated garage door.

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Non-insulated garage doors feature a singe layer of 24- or 25-gauge steel and 2”-thick frame construction. A lower steel gauge is stronger and more durable.

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Constructed using a four-layer “sandwiched” steel method (steel + insulation + steel + composite overlay) the Coachman features optional 1- 3/8” or 2”-thick polyurethane or polystyrene foam insulation with a thermal break and R-values ranging from 6.5 to 18.4 A higher R-value equals better insulation.