It happens to everyone, a lone rock while mowing, a child accidentally throws a baseball, or sometimes you aren’t paying enough attention and you hit your garage door a little with your car, and your door is dented. In one way or another most garage doors will probably suffer some dents and dings at some point. Unless your garage door is protected by some magical forcefield it will happen. The good news is that for the most part it’s not a big deal! Dents and dings are a normal part of life. The problem comes when the dent is more than little, or worse even, if the panel starts to fold or bulge.
Especially with garage doors that do not have insulation, it can be really easy for a garage door to suffer enough damage that the panel needs to be replaced. But how do you know when you should replace a panel, and what’s the big deal if you don’t?
The first thing you need to take into account is what the door was damaged with. If a kid runs into the door with their bike vs. If that kid hits it with the family car when they are 15. In this type of comparison you can expect that the damage from the car would be more significant. How large is the dent? Is it very deep or long? Some dents can be so deep that the panel actually splits open.
If the damage is significant, and the dent is particularly large or deep, you should give us a call. If the door is significantly dented it is better to get it repaired or replaced sooner rather than later. I think the greatest illustration that I can think of is when I had to bid a client for a completely new door. A few weeks prior, their kid had hit the door pretty hard with the back of the van. The van had heavily dented two panels. But as life is very busy the homeowners didn’t call is until the situation got worse. When I got to the house, the door was open but had folded completely in half and was handing by the door cables. Instead of only needing two panels, they had to replace the WHOLE door. If the people had called earlier, their bill probably would have been half as bad.
Benjamin Franklin famously said “A stitch in time saves nine”…hundred dollars. Okay so that last part was obviously added by me, but the sentiment remains! You can save yourself hundreds of dollars by just heading the damage off at the past.
Call us today for a free estimate on repairing your garage door!