Summers in Louisville, KY are hot and humid, and winters are blustery and cold. With garage doors frequently serving as primary entrances, these features can cause tremendous heat loss and heat gains throughout the year. This remains true even when they’re well-made and heavily insulated. Cold or hot air can come rushing into buildings via the cracks and gaps that exist along their edges. Fortunately, you can tighten your home’s envelope and protect the building interior by simply installing weatherstripping. Read on to discover six ways in which weatherstripping affects garage doors.
1. Improved Home Efficiency
Garage doors are often the largest contributing factor to home energy loss. With attached garages, each time these features are opened or closed, conditioned air escapes and heat is either added or displaced. With weatherstripping, you can ensure that these temperature changes aren’t occurring around the clock, even when your garage door is closed.
Weatherstripping blocks unwanted airflow at the base and sides of garage doors. Materials like foam, soft vinyl, and rubber create tight, flexible seals that conform to abutting surfaces. With good general insulation and weatherstripping, the temperature inside your home and the temperature inside your garage shouldn’t be dramatically different.
Weatherstripping keeps hot and cold drafts out and makes it easier to maintain comfortable, habitable conditions in all areas. With weatherstripping installed, you can look forward to lower HVAC-related energy costs. You’ll also find the interior of your stored autos more comfortable at all times of the day. If your garage isn’t freezing cold or stifling hot, your vehicles won’t be either.
2. Create an Effective Sound Barrier
Although garages are often largely used for automobile storage and general storage, some homeowners have converted these spaces into home gyms, workshops, or rec rooms. For many households, they offer additional, functional space for focused or relaxing activities. With weatherstripping, you ‘re less likely to be disrupted by your neighbors’ leaf blowers, nighttime parties, or loud engines. Materials like high-density foam tape and rubber can both block and reflect sound.
In addition to keeping unwanted sounds out, weatherstripping can also block out unpleasant smells. The next time that a skunk wanders into your yard, for instance, your weatherstripping can help keep its strong stench from entering or at least mute it.
3. Prevent the Ingress of Pests
With rats that can fit through holes as small as a quarter and mice that can squeeze through holes as small as a dime, having a large crack beneath your garage door isn’t a good idea. When weatherstripping forms a solid, airtight seal, it’s effective for keeping rodents out. Some weatherstripping can even block the ingress of larger insects. Installing weatherstripping is a great way to bolster a multi-pronged pest management plan. This addition is all the more important if you have indoor pets and use your garage for storing or serving their food.
4. Structural Protection
Garage doors can take a beating. Weatherstripping offers structural protection by increasing impact resistance at their bases. By minimizing impact damages, weatherstripping also offers a fair amount of protection to homes. For instance, it can additionally prevent pitting, cracking, and crumbling of all nearby plaster, concrete, asphalt, and finishes.
Weatherstripping also prevents progressive, weather-related issues like rust and corrosion by blocking moisture or minimizing moisture exposure. While much of your garage door is built for weather resistance, many of its internal and inside-facing components are not.
5. Flood Protection
Garage door weatherstripping that offers a truly airtight seal often offers a watertight seal as well. When rainfall or snowmelt is excessive, good weatherstripping will keep pooling water around your home’s perimeter from finding its way indoors. By keeping moisture out, weatherstripping can minimize your risk of developing mold, mildew, and pervasive, moldering odors in your garage. Given that most garages lack good ventilation and fixed sources of climate control, keeping mold issues at bay in these spaces is critical. In hot, humid conditions, fighting off mold can be a challenging and ongoing battle.
Flood, mold, and mildew protection is also key for protecting everything stored in your garage. Whether you use your garage to house a restored, classic car, board games, Christmas decorations, or costly craft materials and tools, weatherstripping your garage door will optimize storage conditions.
6. Block the Ingress of Windblown Debris
Garages with doors that have large gaps and cracks at their bases tend to be exceeding dusty. Each time the wind blows, dust, pollen, leaves, twigs, and general litter can get pushed inside. Not only does this leave garage floors looking messy and ill-maintained, but it also diminishes indoor air quality (IAQ). Windblown debris can impact the usability of your garage. It can additionally increase the amount of small-sized allergens and contaminants within the building interior.
The Potential Drawbacks of Garage Door Weatherstripping
Choosing the right weatherstripping material for your home and garage door is essential. Not all weatherstripping is guaranteed to work well in the local climate, with your flooring, or as pest prevention.
Freezing to the Ground
Given that winter temperatures in Louisville often dip below freezing, you want weatherstripping materials that won’t ice over and freeze to the ground. Beaded weatherstripping seals work best for cold weather. Even when outside temperatures plummet, your door will still open and fully close on command.
Creates a Raised Threshold
Some weatherstripping creates raised thresholds. For most homeowners, this isn’t a big deal. You might feel a slight bump just as your auto enters your garage, but the surface transition won’t be large enough to affect your wheel alignment, comfort, or tires. The primary drawback of weatherstripping that creates raised thresholds is that it doesn’t work well on uneven surfaces. If you want weatherstripping with a raised threshold but don’t have a smooth, even plane for installation, you can always have slight surface imperfections buffed out or corrected in other ways.
Not Impervious to Mice
Not all weatherstripping is impervious to mice. In fact, rodents enjoy using certain materials to sharpen their teeth or they may simply gnaw through them to create points of ingress. However, aggressive rodent behavior around chewable weatherstripping materials may be indicative of an attractant inside your garage rather than a problem with the weatherstripping itself. For instance, if you’ve had a prior weatherstripping material get gnawed through, you may need to remove uncovered bowls of pet food or water from the interior of your garage.
How to Get the Most From Garage Door Weatherstripping
To optimize the benefits of garage door weatherstripping, you should always work with professionals when choosing and installing it. We can help you find the perfect option for blocking outdoor air, dust, sound, and pests without creating threshold issues or the potential for freezing. It’s important to consider far more than just the R-values or insulating capabilities of weatherstripping. Some options simply aren’t feasible for certain applications and others won’t provide the needs-specific protection your home deserves.
We help homeowners protect their garage doors and lower their carbon footprints with durable, high-performing weatherstripping. We also provide top-notch garage doors, door openers, and garage door maintenance and replacement services. To discover our complete range of capabilities or schedule an appointment, get in touch with Lewis Door Service today!
