If you are a car owner, chances are that you park your car in your garage every evening. As one of the millions of people who park their vehicles in their garage, you probably know how annoying it is when your garage door develops a fault and your vehicle has to spend the night outside. According to Calgary Garage Door Fix, which does garage door repair in SE Calgary, the panels of garage doors are often customized to be very sensitive, meaning they often bend or buckle for a number of reasons, most commonly due to force or excessive pressure. If you have a buckled or bent garage door, here are a few things you need to know to fix your problem.

Why Do Garage Doors Buckle?

There are a few factors that may cause your garage door to buckle, and you must determine why your door is faulty before taking the necessary steps to have it fixed.

• Your door has weak resistance: Doors made from low-quality material are prone to buckling. If your door is made of flimsy metal, it will likely buckle at any sign of excessive pressure or force and should be replaced with more durable material.
• Exposure to extreme weather conditions: If your door is exposed to heavy winds and rainfall during a storm, it can cause the panels to warp, making the door buckle. Harsh weather conditions will likely damage your panels, and you might have to get replacements for the affected panels or adjust the tracks to get your door functional again.
• The door’s tracks are misaligned: Your door’s tracks are what ensure the door’s rollers open and close in line with the door frame. A misaligned track can lead to a stiff or buckled door.
• You need a strut: Struts may be required if you are having issues with your garage door opener. Struts ensure smooth and hitch-free opening and closing of your garage door and helps reduce the risk of buckling or bending.

These are some of the most common reasons why your door may buckle. Some of them are easily solvable or preventable on your own, while other may require a more professional skill set.

Fixing Your Buckled Door

The first step to fixing your buckled garage door is to determine exactly what the problem is. Once you are certain of the reason for your damaged doors, getting it functional again should be a simple task for most DIY experts.

Let’s take a look at the most common  fixes for a buckled garage door:

Lubricate your hinges: Sometimes, applying a little grease to your door’s rollers is all it takes to keep it functional for a long time. When your door becomes dry and rusty, it begins to make screeching noises while opening, and this is a sign it needs lubrication. A rusted door can become stiff, and lubrication might be all it needs to start moving again.

See WikiHow for more details on how to lubricate your garage doors.

Adjust the door’s tracks: Bent and misaligned tracks is one of the most common issues leading to buckled or stiff doors. It often happens over time due to excessive use of your doors or bad weather conditions. Sometimes replacing the tracks outright may be the best option depending on the damage done to it. But for more minor issues, you can simply adjust the tracks that are being impaired.

To adjust your tracks, you’ll need to loosen their brackets with a screwdriver or wrench. Once they are loosened, gently shift the tracks to the left or right, causing the doors to move. Do this until there is a 0.64 cm gap between the bottom of the door and the top of the crown molding, which indicates that the tracks may be aligned.

Check the tracks with a vertical level to make certain that they are aligned, then retighten the loosened brackets with your screwdriver. Open and close your doors multiple times to ensure the problem is fixed.

WikiHow has more ways to align your tracks.

Install a garage door strut: Now, this might be one for the pros to handle. If you have a buckled garage door, installing a strut (if you don’t have one) or an extra one will likely fix the issue if the above solutions haven’t already done the trick. Struts are steel bars installed at the top of your garage door to support it while it opens and closes to prevent bending and buckling.

Homeowners install struts to support the door and ensure it doesn’t bend under pressure. If your door gets hit by a huge gust of wind, chances are it will buckle without a strut to support it. For double garage doors, at least three reinforcement struts are recommended. Uneven or inadequately installed struts could do more harm than good to your door, so it’s advisable to contact a pro to have your strut installed.

The weight of a door can put a lot of strain on the entire machinery. Adding a strut could relive the stress on the door’s hinges, but the extra metal could alter the weight significantly. A professional can re-calibrate the entire system to counterbalance the additional weight of the struts.

For more on the importance and installation of struts, check out Houston NearSay.

Conclusion

Homeowners with garage doors will often experience issues, especially those whose garages sees a lot of traffic. A door that is used frequently will no doubt develop issues, and so will a door not that is not used frequently enough, as it becomes stiff and prone to rust.

Garage doors have all sorts of problems from buckling to bending and bowing. A buckled door could be fixed in a few ways, but adjusting the tracks and installing a new or extra strut are the most effective options. Adjusting the tracks is fairly straightforward, but installing struts should be done only by professionals or the most adept DIY experts.