Choosing the door before you choose the price

Most installation quotes go wrong at the specification stage rather than the pricing stage. Three decisions drive both how the door performs and what it costs, and they are worth making deliberately.

Insulated or not

If the garage is attached, shares a wall with living space, or gets used as a workshop, insulated is the right answer in this valley — it keeps the space usable through both a 100°F August and a freezing January, and the rigid foam core makes the section stiffer so the hardware wears more slowly. For a detached, unheated shop, uninsulated is honest value. The premium runs roughly $300–$500 on a double door.

Steel gauge

Builder-grade doors are typically 27–28 gauge. Stepping up to 24–25 gauge costs modestly more and meaningfully improves dent resistance and shape retention through the daily expansion and contraction cycle. On any door facing a driveway that gets used, it pays for itself.

Material

Insulated steel for most homes, composite overlay when the house needs a carriage look without the upkeep, real wood only if you will genuinely re-seal it every two to three years. We would steer you away from fiberglass here — it becomes brittle in cold and our winter nights are cold enough, often enough, that panels crack. The full reasoning is in our guide to materials for Yakima weather.

What we do before the new door goes up

A new door on a bad opening is a new door with the old problems. Before anything gets hung we check:

  • The opening is square and the header is sound. Track fastened to a header that has moved will pull out of alignment again within months.
  • Headroom and backroom. Standard track needs about 12 inches of headroom; low-headroom kits handle less but change the hardware spec and the price.
  • Floor level across the opening. An out-of-level floor is why a door seals on one side and gaps on the other, and it is fixed with the bottom seal, not by forcing the track.
  • The opener is worth keeping. A new insulated door is heavier than the uninsulated one it replaces. An opener that was adequate before may not be, and we would rather say so up front than have you call us back in a month.

What installation day looks like

A straightforward single-door replacement is a half day; a double with a new opener is most of a day. The old door comes down and goes with us — haul-away is included, not an extra line. New track is fitted rather than reused, because reusing track is where cheap installs come apart. Springs are sized to the finished weight of the actual door with its actual hardware, not to the catalogue figure.

Before we leave: a full balance test, so the door holds position anywhere in its travel; a safety-reversal test against a 2x4; photo-eye alignment; and a walk-through of the opener, remotes, and keypad. You get the written warranty on parts and labour before we drive away.

Supplying your own door

We will fit a door you have bought, at $40–$60 per hour, but we rarely recommend it. Doors bought separately routinely arrive with springs sized to a generic weight rather than the finished weight of that door with its glazing and hardware, and re-springing it on site eats most of the saving. If you are set on it, send us the model and spring spec before you order and we will tell you whether it is right.