HOW TO AUTOMATE YOUR EXISTING GARAGE DOOR

Auto­mat­ed garage doors are very com­mon on the con­ti­nent and in the US, but in the UK they’ve tak­en longer to come into the main­stream. Now, how­ev­er, with bet­ter tech­nol­o­gy and avail­abil­i­ty, it’s become very easy to con­vert your garage door to elec­tron­ic open­ing for a rea­son­able cost. Even when buy­ing a new garage door entire­ly, the addi­tion of a motor does not add a huge amount to the full cost of the door, with some types com­ing with an auto­mat­ic open­ing as standard.

WHY CHOOSE AN AUTO­MAT­ED GARAGE DOOR?
There are many rea­sons why home­own­ers opt for an elec­tric motor for their garage door – it’s not just to do with mod­ern convenience:

1. It’s eas­i­er for old­er or weak­er users – Garage doors are designed to be easy to use, but for some, they can be heavy and cum­ber­some; par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to old­er doors. For chil­dren, those who are too short to reach the garage when it’s open and for the dis­abled or elder­ly, open­ing a garage door can rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge. An auto­mat­ed garage door can be opened with the touch of a but­ton, leav­ing the user to sim­ply wait while it rais­es the door panel.
   
   
2. It means avoid­ing the unpre­dictable UK weath­er – Rather than hav­ing to get out of your car in the pour­ing rain, bit­ing cold and dri­ving wind (and that’s just the British sum­mer!), an auto­mat­ic door can be opened from the com­fort of your car. Once it’s ful­ly open, you sim­ply dri­ve in and press the but­ton again to close it – what could be easier?
   
   
3. It opens the garage door cor­rect­ly every time – Garage doors can suf­fer if they’re not used prop­er­ly. Pulling a door open from any­where but the very cen­tre (where the han­dle is locat­ed) can shift it off-bal­ance and dam­age the inter­nal mech­a­nism, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to use and expen­sive to repair or replace. An auto­mat­ic open­ing arm will ensure the door is raised from the cen­tre in an even, smooth motion, pre­serv­ing the door and keep­ing it in full work­ing order for as long as possible.
   
   
4. It’s secure – With an auto­mat­ed garage door, you do not use a lock and key like you would with a man­u­al door. The elec­tric motor itself will keep the door in the closed posi­tion until you unlock it by ask­ing it to open. The strength of the motor pre­vents forced entry and is hard­er for thieves to over­come as they can­not get to the motor to tam­per with it (as they may do with a lock).
   
   

HOW DO I AUTO­MATE MY EXIST­ING GARAGE DOOR?

To auto­mate your exist­ing garage door, you’ll have to take a few things into account. First­ly, the con­di­tion of your door is a large decid­ing fac­tor when con­sid­er­ing whether it’s suit­able for con­ver­sion. An old, dent­ed or warped door is not going to work very well with an elec­tric motor and should real­ly be replaced for safe­ty and secu­ri­ty reasons.

Canopy garage doors (where the door itself pro­trudes from the entrance when the door is ful­ly open) are dif­fi­cult to con­vert to auto­mat­ed open­ing and only new­er, well-looked-after canopy doors tend to cope well with the con­ver­sion. You need some addi­tion­al equip­ment called a bow arm kit, which can push up the cost.

Tracked garage doors (which open like a canopy door but slide back into the garage ful­ly, rather than pro­trud­ing from the entrance) are per­fect for con­vert­ing to elec­tron­ic open­ing. Doors like this are com­mon­ly installed with motors and are often con­vert­ed after being in use as a man­u­al door very successfully.

Sec­tion­al garage doors also lend them­selves well to auto­mat­ed open­ing, requir­ing a motor just like the ones used for tracked doors and the rare canopy door which is suit­able for con­ver­sion. Roller garage doors are often motorised as stan­dard, but if they aren’t, then a dif­fer­ent type of motor is required and it may mean you have to replace the whole door.

WHICH NEW GARAGE DOORS ARE AUTOMATIC?

Every sin­gle garage door in our roller range comes with an auto­mat­ic open­ing as stan­dard. The motor is locat­ed in the door roll itself, which is mount­ed above, with­in or just out­side the open­ing. This means it does not take up a lot of room on the ceil­ing of your garage, unlike the motor for oth­er types of garage doors.

Our sec­tion­al garage doors are avail­able in either a motorised or man­u­al ver­sion, although you can change your mind and con­vert your door one way or the oth­er if you feel you have made the wrong choice.

Our tracked doors come as man­u­al as stan­dard, but it’s easy to upgrade to auto­mat­ic open­ing by adding a door motor from our acces­sories sec­tion. Canopy doors, as men­tioned above, are tricky to con­vert and we at Evan­der pre­fer to install them as man­u­al only. This is because we like to ensure our cus­tomers are get­ting great ser­vice and val­ue for mon­ey – the inef­fi­cien­cies of a con­vert­ed canopy door may not help us to achieve this and there­fore we always sug­gest a tracked garage door instead.