Are you finding that your heating and air conditioning bills are going up? When this happens, people will typically look at their old windows or their ageing HVAC system as the most likely leakage culprits. However, your garage door may be the cause.
Your garage door takes up as much as 30% of your home’s front facade. This means that when it begins to age, your heat or air conditioning will leak out of the cracks and your energy dollars will go out with it.
If it’s time for you to update or upgrade your home’s garage door, here are the most energy-efficient materials you can choose from.
Insulated Garage Doors
This one is a bit of a no-brainer. As the name suggests, insulated garage doors will always give you the highest insulation and the best R-Value of any type of garage door.
They are available in a wide variety of designs and colors to match the look of nearly any home, while reducing their carbon footprint. If you want to see what’s available, we invite you to learn more from Dodds Garage Doors and browse their selection. Upgrading could also help the resale value of your home.
Wood Garage Doors
Wood is a fairly strong natural insulator. Just think of putting a wooden spoon in a pot of boiling water. The handle stays relatively cool, whereas a metal spoon would probably heat up a lot quicker.
This is because wood contains tiny pockets of air that can absorb heat or cold. Unfortunately, this air also causes wood to expand and contract over the course of a cold and damp winter, or a warm and humid summer.
This means your wood garage door will slowly lose its ability to insulate due to cracking or warping. The warping may mean that your door can no longer form an airtight seal when closed, or air could simply seep in/out the structural cracks in the actual door.
Steel Garage Doors
As you may have guessed from our wooden spoon versus metal spoon analogy above, a metal door is not quite as good at insulating your garage as a wood door, as it conducts heat and cold very easily.
However, it is more durable over the long term and more likely to stand up to humid weather than wood, with less ongoing maintenance. This durability makes it a great choice when combining it with insulation.
Aluminum Garage Doors
Aluminum composition has come a long way over the years, in terms of durability. However, these doors are more for mild climates that aren’t going to see extreme cold, or punishing blizzards.
If energy-efficiency is a priority, this may not be the best choice for your home.
Vinyl Garage Doors
These garage doors are often bought by families for their “kid-proof” qualities. Vinyl is not going to show a scrape or dent as prominently as a steel door, if it happens to get hit by a stray fastball or someone accidentally backs the car into it.
Vinyl will also give you a relatively high R-Value, but this shouldn’t be the go-to material for energy-conscious homeowners.
As you can see, the best choice is most likely going to be an insulated garage door. It may cost you a few hundred dollars more to upgrade. However, if you use your garage as a workspace, you can recoup those costs very quickly.