Of all the inventions that help define the modern age, few have as big an influence on our daily life as the automatic garage door. Day after day the garage door is there for us, reliably opening and closing on cue, protecting us from the worst of Arvada weather, and making our access and egress from the home safe, comfortable, and convenient. We tend not to notice the garage door, however, until we need to call for garage door repair. But repairs are not the only way an old garage door can cost you money. Below we’re going to look at six ways an old garage door can be a drain on your finances.

The Hidden Costs of Keeping an Old Garage Door

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right? Well, sort of. Just because an old garage door can still rise and fall on command it doesn’t mean it’s not time to order a new garage door installation. Old garage doors often become money sieves without the homeowner even realizing it, and the longer you hang onto one of those doors the worse the financial losses get. Here are six ways your old garage door could be costing you beaucoup bucks.

• 1) Heat Loss - Part 1: The older the door the less effective the weather stripping and the looser the panels and other parts. All these loose components create myriad cracks and crevices for warm air to exit the garage space. “But wait,” you say, “I don’t heat my garage”. Doesn’t matter. It’s still warmer than outdoors in winter and when the little heat there is in the garage is sucked out through those cracks and crevices in the door it pulls heat out of adjoining rooms. As a result, your furnace has to work overtime to keep the kitchen or the bedroom over the garage warm.
• 2) Heat Loss - Part 2: Okay, you just read what we wrote above and did a quick check of your garage door. There don’t seem to be any loose panels and you just had the weather stripping replaced. So everything’s hunky dory, right? Not necessarily. If yours is one of the countless garage doors out there that’s not insulated it’s still venting heat to the atmosphere and you’re still paying larger energy bills than you should be.
• 3) Repair-a-rama: The law of diminishing returns means that after a certain point, the cost of maintaining an old garage door becomes greater than the cost of simply ordering a new garage door installation. Modern garage doors have a surprising number of parts, all of which wear down with age and need to be refurbished, repaired, or replaced. Once a door passes ten or 15 years of age you’re going to have the repair man out to the house every couple of months to replace broken garage door springs, burned out motors, broken cables, jammed rollers, and other parts.
• 4) Increased vulnerability: Did you know that nearly 10% of all home invasions happen through the garage door? It’s true. The older the garage door the more vulnerable it is to being pried open or allowing the intruder to disengage the motor and open the door manually. And once the weasel is inside your house they’re only limited by how much they can carry out. If you don’t want to transfer your wealth to the local B&E guys you’d do well to order a new garage door.
• 5) Energy inefficiency: Some of the most important technological advances of the past 20 years have nothing to do with smartphones, cloud computing, or AI and everything to do with creating more energy-efficient products. That’s as true for efficient garage door openers as it is for LED lights. Today’s automatic garage door opener uses far less electricity than its predecessor from just 20 years ago. So if you’re still hanging on to the garage door you installed at the turn of the century you’re paying for it with higher daily operating costs.
• 6) Decreased home value: Curb appeal plays an important role in determining the value of your home. Studies conducted by the real estate industry indicate that homes with peeling paint, missing shingles, or an old, worn-out garage door are valued as much as 7% less than homes whose exteriors are well-maintained. So while some might feel that their creaky old garage door gives their home some serious street cred, the fact is it’s dragging down the market value of the house and that could affect everything from the potential sale price to the homeowner’s ability to borrow against their home’s value.
• Bonus fact: An old garage door that makes your home more vulnerable to break-ins could cause your insurance premiums to rise. And even if the insurance company isn’t aware you have an old door, if you suffer a break-in they may refuse to pay once they discover the truth.

Expert Garage Door Installation in Arvada

Old garage doors that break down all the time and stutter and shake their way up and down the tracks are more than an inconvenience, they’re a money pit that is assaulting your financial well-being from multiple angles. If you’ve been spending too much time with the garage door repair technician lately it’s time to get in touch with the team at Well Hung Garage Doors and order up a new one. Your wallet will be glad you did.