I received an estimate to convert my old one piece garage door over to a sectional roll up garage door. Why is there an extra charge to convert?

When do you have a one piece garage door and you would like to convert it to a sectional roll up garage door there are a few things that have to be done before your garage door opening can accommodate a sectional roll up garage door. Or if you have garage doors that are very old in your home and they slide back and forth usually there are two doors and one will slide behind the other these are called sliding garage doors and they are usually very old and is another reason for an extra cost to convert from these types of garage doors. Whether you need to fit the Garage opening to the new door or you have to fit the garage door to the garage door opening either way there is going to be extra cost involved. It does happen but not very often that I show up to give somebody an estimate for a roll up conversion and I do not need to do any extra work to the door opening to make the door fit properly like I said it does happen but it’s not that often. If you have to make the garage door opening fit the garage door then you are going to need to add some wood to your opening most likely on the left and right hand sides of the door especially if it is over 16 feet wide you will need to add the wood to get the opening preferably under 16 feet more like 15 feet 11 inches is almost perfect as long as the garage door opening is plum or perfectly square which almost never happens either unless it is a brand new home. In the other case if you have to fit the garage door to your door opening then you are going to pay a little extra to cut that door to the size needed to fit in your opening properly.

 if your garage door is 15 feet 6 inches wide

For example if your garage door is 15 feet 6 inches wide they do not make a garage door from a manufacturer that is 15 feet 6 inches wide what will have to be done is a garage door company will have to cut off 3 inches on each and of the garage door panels to make the door 15 feet 6 inches wide. Either way you are probably going to pay a little bit more for your garage door but it is necessary in order for it to fit properly and get a good seal because a one piece garage door is not designed to seal against the door opening is designed to have spaces between the left and right hand side of the door and the door jamb. This space is what keeps the door from rubbing against the door jamb when it is opening and closing. The other factor that would cause you to pay a little more is a headroom issue sometimes garage doors that are one piece do not need a whole lot of headroom in order to function properly. But a sectional roll up garage door does need at least 10 inches of headroom to use conventional garage door track. If you have less than 10 inches of headroom above your garage door then you can use low headroom garage door track this track is designed specifically to accommodate a sectional roll up garage door with less than 10 inches of headroom.

installing garage doors

Most of the time when you have a home and the garage is on the bottom floor and there are two to three stories above the garage of living area then it is common to have headroom issues because of the sheer weight of the home that is above the garage needs a lot of extra support. Let me give you an example of extreme low headroom garages when I was installing garage doors for Costco in the San Francisco Bay Area we would always come across homes especially in the city of San Francisco that would have almost zero headroom or two inches of headroom and the opening would be 8 foot wide by 7 foot 6 inches tall and only a couple of inches of headroom. So let me explain how I prepared the garage door opening to fit a 8×7 garage door.

nailing four pieces of 2 by 4 that are 8 feet long

First I would need to frame down the opening of the garage what this means is since it is 7 feet 6 inches tall I need to bring the opening down to seven feet even and that would be done by screwing or nailing four pieces of 2 by 4 that are 8 feet long one on top of the other now what this does is it automatically gives me 6 inches of headroom and that is sufficient for me to use low headroom track and make the door function properly. And sometimes I would even have to add some wood to the left and right side of the door opening 2 get the opening about an inch under 8 feet or 7 feet 11 inches wide. This is obviously where your extra cost is going to come into play the added lumber and labor to add the wood is going to cost you a bit more. Another option instead of the processes I just explained would be to replace your old wood one piece garage door with a steel one piece garage door that looks exactly like a sectional roll up garage door but operates and functions like a one piece garage door and has all the same hardware to do so if you go this route then you will probably not incur a bunch of extra charges.