Garage Door Replacement
There is a time when a garage door is not worth repairing. The bottom panel is rusted out, the door has come off track more than once, or someone backed into it and the whole thing folds in the middle now. At that point you are not looking at another repair bill, you are looking at a garage door replacement. Century Garage Door Service will measure your opening, walk you through the door options that actually fit it, remove the old door and hardware, and install the new one right the first time.
- Custom built and new residential garage doors in steel, wood and aluminum
- Old door, track and hardware taken out and taken away
- We install LiftMaster, Genie, Chamberlain, Craftsman, Clopay, Amarr, Wayne Dalton & Overhead Door
Talk to a local garage door company about your opening requirements. There is no need to replace a door that can be repaired.
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Who Really Comes to Your House
A lot of the numbers you find online don’t even belong to a garage door company. They belong to a lead broker. You call, you describe what your door looks like and your address is sold to whatever contractor bids on it that hour. That’s why the guy who rings your doorbell sometimes doesn’t know what you told the person on the phone. Century Garage Door Service is nothing like that. When you call 833-435-4540 you are speaking with our people and the installers that show up are our installers.
It’s a deliberately simple process. You tell us what is happening with the door and we ask the questions that really matter. How wide is the opening? Is it a single car garage door or a double? Is the door insulated? How much headroom is above the opening? Is the opener staying or going? Then we come out and take our own measurements because a guess on a replacement is how people end up with a door that doesn’t fit the frame. You’ve got the options and the pricing before anybody’s laid a hand on the old door.
The vans contain the materials that a replacement job actually uses: track and brackets, rollers, hinges, struts, torsion tubes, drums and cables, bearing plates, weatherstrip and bottom seal, fasteners, and the tools to safely remove an old overhead door. We also carry opener hardware and safety sensors, because a new door on a fifteen year old chain drive is a job half done. The thing is, the crew shows up to get it done, not to tell you they’ll be back with the right part.
What a Garage Door Replacement Actually Looks Like
Same opening, same header, same driveway. The old overhead garage door had a rusted bottom section and a twisted track that kept binding on the way up. Replaced with insulated steel door with top row of window inserts, new track, rollers and hardware throughout.
What Breaks on an Old Garage Door, and What We Replace
Doors don’t fail en masse very often. They break in one spot, they get fixed, then they break somewhere else six months later. Here’s what usually moves a door from garage door repair territory to replacement territory, and how we deal with each one.
Dented, cracked or split panels
One dent from a basketball is cosmetic. A panel that is folded in the middle or pulling away from its stiles, or a panel split along a hinge line is structural and puts load on the sections above and below it. We can sometimes swap out one section on steel garage doors if they are still being manufactured and the color is still available. On older doors or obsolete lines, a single panel is either impossible to match, or expensive enough that a new garage door is the better option. We will tell you honestly what situation you are in before you spend your money on either one.
Bottom section failing, rust and decay
The bottom of a door lives in standing water, road salt and lawn sprinkler spray. Down there steel rusts from the inside out, and wood garage doors absorb water and begin delaminating at the corners. When the bottom section is soft, the bottom brackets that hold the lift cables have nothing solid to grip, and that is a hardware failure waiting to happen. This is one of the clearest cases of replacement you can get. So we change the door, put new weatherstrip and a good bottom seal on it, so the new one doesn’t do the same thing.
A door that keeps going off track
A bent garage door track that has been straightened and bent again never works quite right again. The rollers are rough, the door sticks on the way up, and eventually jumps right out of its track. A good door sometimes can be fixed with new track and rollers. Sometimes the door itself is out of square, the sections no longer sitting flush, and no amount of new track will hold it. We measure the opening and check the door for square before quoting. With a warped door you only get a few months out of track replacement.
An old door that is too heavy, too loud, or uninsulated
Older doors are heavy and solidly built, until you consider the effect of that weight on the springs, cables and openers over twenty years. If your opener is straining, your springs are failing on a short cycle, and your garage is unusable in the summer, the door itself is the problem. Modern insulated steel and aluminum garage doors are lighter, quieter, and easier on all the parts that lift them. We do the complete garage door installation including new track, hardware, springs sized to the new door weight and opener setup with properly aligned garage door sensors.
Deciding When to Repair or Replace
The reality is, most of the calls we get are for repairs, not replacements. If you have a broken spring, you don’t need a new door, you need a garage door spring replacement. A dead opener is an opener job. Before you decide anything, find out the garage door repair cost for what is actually broken and compare it with the garage door replacement cost for the whole opening. That comparison shakes out roughly like this.
Repair the door you have
- Makes sense if the door is sound and only the hardware or one component failed.
- Sections are straight, square and structurally sound with no rust or rot at the base
- The failure is the springs, cables, rollers, hinges, track or the opener, not the door
- Your door model is new enough that one panel can still be matched
- You're not fighting the same problem for the third time in two years
Change the whole door
- Makes sense if you're just getting a lot of repairs, or if the door is failing in a way the hardware can't fix.
- The bottom section is rusted, rotted or crushed so the bottom brackets have nothing solid to hold onto.
- The door is out of square and keeps jumping the garage door track no matter what is replaced.
- No more panels available and one replacement section costs a large percentage of a new door
- You want insulation, a quieter door or a look that the current door can't give you
Garage Door Replacement: What You Should and Shouldn't Do Yourself
People look for how to replace a garage door yourself and come across videos that make it look like a weekend project. Some of it is really homeowner work and doing it well saves you money and saves us time. If you want it, you get the measuring, the deciding, the prep, all that. Step five explains exactly why the part where the old door comes down isn’t. Do these one after the other.
- 1
Measure the opening right
Measure the width and height of the finished opening itself, not the old door. Then take the sideroom on each side of the opening, the headroom from the top of the opening to the ceiling or lowest obstruction, and the backroom from the opening back straight into the garage. Write down the five numbers. The headroom is the one that catches people out. Low headroom changes the track type you need and it is the difference between a door that fits and a door that gets sent back.
- 2
Figure out if the problem is the door or the hardware
Open the door part way and let go. A balanced door stays pretty much where you put it. Then look at the door itself when it is closed. Look down the length of each section for bowing, press the bottom corners for softness and see if the sections are flush with each other. If the sections are straight and solid, chances are you are dealing with a hardware repair. If the bottom is soft, or the door is visibly out of square, you need a replacement.
- 3
Rule out the cheap fixes first
Before you spend on a new door, rule out the things that cost almost nothing. A cracked garage door threshold seal or hardened bottom weatherstrip allows water, wind and pests to get in, and both are homeowner-friendly to replace. Tighten any screws which have come loose on the hinge and bracket. Clean the tracks. Lubricate rollers, hinges and bearings with a good garage door lubricant, not WD-40. If the door is quieter and smoother after, you’ve bought yourself real time.
- 4
Pick your material, insulation, and style before you call
Steel is the default for a reason: it’s durable, low-maintenance and available at the widest range of price points. Aluminum garage doors are lighter and resist corrosion, which makes a difference in coastal air. Wooden garage doors are the most beautiful, but they require the most care. Custom garage doors can accommodate anything not found in the standard catalog, from oversized openings to unique architectural looks. Choose whether you want insulation, and separately, whether you want a garage door with windows across the top section. Having those answers at the ready makes the quote much more precise.
- 5
Clear the area, then stop and let the installers get the old door off
Take the cars off, clear three or four feet of floor on each side of the opening, take anything breakable off the walls near the track and unplug the opener. That is where your part in the job stops. To remove an existing overhead door you need to release the tension on the torsion spring, disconnect the cables that are under hundreds of pounds of load, and at all times have a heavy door balanced overhead. This is the step that sends people to the emergency room and it’s the step that garage door installers get paid for.
SAFETY WARNING — READ BEFORE TOUCHING THE SPRINGS
Never try to unwind, adjust or remove a torsion or extension spring on your own. Do not loosen any set screw on a cable drum. Do not ever cut a lift cable. Do not remove the bottom brackets from a closed door. Those springs take the full weight of the door and a slipping spring or winding bar gives you no warning and no second chance. Broken fingers, broken jaws, lost eyes and worse all come out of this very job. The same applies to a door that has come off its tracks. Do not try to force it back on with the springs loaded.
If the job involves springs, cables, or a door off its track, set down your tools and call 833-435-4540
How to Choose a Garage Door Company for Replacement
Replacement is a bigger decision than a repair, and that’s why it brings out the worst behavior in this industry. It’s a pattern we’ve seen before. A company gets called out on a little problem, finds a reason why the whole door has to go, and comes up with a price on the spot that expires if you sleep on it overnight. Any garage door repair company that has a replacement in every truck roll is not diagnosing, they’re selling. A real one will tell you that the repair is the better buy even when the repair is the smaller ticket.
Ask what it actually includes, because that is where the quotes stop being comparable. Does the price include removal/disposal of the old door or is this an extra? Is it new track and hardware, or does the installer reuse your bent track? Are the springs matched to the weight of the new door or are they re-used from the old door? Is the opener being reconnected and are the safety sensors being realigned and tested? Two quotes might look a thousand dollars apart but when you ask those four questions you may find that they are for completely different jobs.
Ask the two questions that separate garage door companies that install doors from those that just sell them before you sign anything: Who is physically doing the installation? Your own crew, or a subcontractor no one has met? And a week later if the door doesn’t fit properly or the balance is off who comes back and how much does that visit cost me?
Garage Door Replacement Questions
How much does a new garage door cost?
The real answer is that garage door cost depends on four factors: size, material, insulation and hardware. A single car garage door in uninsulated steel is at the low end of the range. The most common residential job is a double width insulated steel door, right in the middle. Wood, custom garage doors and oversized openings are at the top. Add new track and hardware on top of the door itself, springs sized properly to the new weight, removal and disposal of the old door, and opener work if the opener is being replaced as well. If a garage door company gives you a hard number for how much a garage door is without first taking measurements of your opening, they’re guessing. Call 833-435-4540 and we’ll give you a real number for your real door.
Can you just swap out a panel instead of the entire door?
Sometimes and we’ll always check first. It is contingent upon your door model still being in production, if the section can be matched for color and pattern, and if the rest of the door is square and sound. For newer doors with a single bad section, single panel replacement is effective. It doesn’t work well on older doors, because the discontinued panels either can’t be found or cost so much that you’re paying a large fraction of the price of a new door for one section that won’t match the others exactly.
When I replace the door, do I need a new opener?
Not necessarily. If your opener is in good shape and has working safety reversal and photo eyes, it can usually stay and we will reconnect it, reset the travel limits and force settings for the new door, and realign and test the garage door sensors. The place it makes sense to change it out is if the opener is already noisy, struggling or old enough that it doesn’t have the modern safety features. The cheapest time to do garage door opener installation is when the door is coming off anyway. We install LiftMaster, Genie and Chamberlain garage door openers.
What brands and materials do you use?
We install and service Clopay, Amarr, Wayne Dalton and Overhead Door brands of doors and LiftMaster, Genie, Chamberlain and Craftsman openers. As for materials, we offer insulated and non-insulated steel garage doors, aluminum, wood and custom garage doors for openings that don’t fall into standard sizes. If you want light in the garage without giving up security, most lines have window inserts.
Do you do commercial doors and roll up doors?
Yes. Commercial garage door installation is a different animal than residential work, with heavier sections, higher cycle counts and different hardware specs. We work on roll up garage doors and rolling steel service doors on warehouses, shops and loading bays as well as sectional commercial garage doors. A roll up door that gets used forty times a day wears out on a totally different schedule compared to a home door so the spec matters more than the price tag. Call 833-435-4540 with your opening dimensions and daily cycle count and we will spec it right.
Looking to Replace Your Garage Door?
The conversation begins the same way whether you already know the door has to go, or you just want a straight answer on whether it can be saved. Let us know what the door is doing for you, give us the opening measurements if you have them and we will tell you if you are looking at a repair or a garage door replacement. If it is a repair we will say so.
Century Garage Door Service – garage door service and repair, replacement and installation for homes and businesses.
Related Garage Door Services
Garage Door Repair
Garage door repair services for problems that don't require a new door. Springs, cables, rollers, hinges and track.
Garage Door Opener Installation
New LiftMaster, Genie and Chamberlain openers installed, programmed and safety tested.
Commercial Garage Door Installation
Installed and specified sectional, roll up and rolling steel doors for warehouses, shops and loading bays.