New Garage Door Installation

Repair Is Usually Cheaper. Here’s When It Isn’t.

Almost everything that goes wrong with a garage door is a wear part. Springs, cables, rollers, hinges, drums and openers all fail on a schedule, and replacing one costs a fraction of a new door fitted. If a company’s first answer to a broken spring is a new door, get a second opinion.

Replacement is the honest answer when the sections themselves are the problem. That means a panel folded by a car, rust eating through the bottom section, or a door with so many separate faults at once that you’d be buying a new door one part at a time and paying more for the privilege.

Age on its own is not a reason. A twenty-year-old steel door with straight sections and a sound bottom retainer is a perfectly good door that needs rollers.

What “A New Door” Actually Includes

A proper installation is not just panels. What comes out and goes back in:

• The sections — the visible door, in the size, style and colour you picked.
• Vertical and horizontal track — matched to the headroom you actually have, not to a standard that assumes you have plenty.
• Rollers and hinges — new, and the roller choice is the single biggest thing you can do about how loud the door is.
• Cables and drums — sized to the door’s height so the door sits level when it lands.
• A torsion spring wound for the finished weight — the part most often carried over by somebody cutting a corner, and the reason a cheap install is expensive later.
• Bottom seal and retainer — the thing that keeps the water in the driveway rather than the garage, which matters more in this city than in most.
• The old door taken away. It does not get left leaning against the side of the house.

Steel, and Why Almost Everything Here Is Steel

Nearly every door we fit in Houston and Katy is steel, in one of three builds: single-skin (one layer, no insulation), a steel sandwich with a polystyrene board in it, or a steel sandwich with polyurethane foamed in place. Going up that list gets you a stiffer, quieter, better-insulated door and a heavier one.

Wood looks wonderful and it is a maintenance commitment in a climate that runs humid most of the year. Composite and faux-wood overlays give you the carriage-house look on a steel door without the refinishing. If you want real wood, say so and we’ll talk about what it needs.

Insulation, Honestly

The R-value printed on a door is the panel’s number, not the garage’s. Roughly: single-skin has no meaningful rating, polystyrene sits around R-6 to R-9, and polyurethane runs about R-12 to R-18 depending on how thick the section is. Those are the manufacturers’ figures for the section on its own.

What that number does not account for is an uninsulated ceiling, an uninsulated wall to the house, a gap under a worn bottom seal, or a garage that is vented to outside by design. Fit an R-18 door to a garage with all four and you will notice the difference, but not the difference on the sticker.

Our honest rule: if the garage is a gym, a workshop, a laundry, or has a bedroom over the top of it, insulation earns its keep here. If it is where the car sleeps, a single-skin steel door is not the wrong answer. Insulated doors are also noticeably quieter, which is the benefit people actually notice first.

Sizes, Headroom and Backroom

Around Houston and Katy the common openings are 8×7 and 16×7 on older tract homes, and 9×8 and 18×8 on the newer builds out past the Grand Parkway. Two singles instead of one double is common on garages built side-entry.

The measurement that catches people out is headroom — the gap between the top of the opening and the ceiling. Standard track wants around twelve inches. Less than that and it is low-headroom track, which exists and works but has to be specified before the door is ordered. We measure the opening, the headroom, the backroom and the side room on the estimate visit, and the quote is built from those numbers.

Windstorm Country Starts South of Us

The garage door is usually the largest opening in the house, which is why it is the one that gets the wind-load question. Whether it applies to you depends on the address: the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association covers the fourteen seacoast counties plus the part of Harris County east of State Highway 146.

So a Galveston or League City door is a different conversation from a Katy one, and your insurer may have a view even where the county doesn’t. Tell us the address when you call and we’ll tell you whether it is a question for your build before you pick a door.

Your Opener Probably Stays

A healthy opener carries over to the new door. What changes is the spring, because the new door weighs something different, and the travel and force limits, which get reset to the new door’s height. We test the safety reverse before we leave, every time.

The exception is an opener that was already on its way out, or one with no photo eyes at all — which dates it to before 1993 and makes it worth replacing while the garage is already open. Opener repair and replacement →

What It Costs

The estimate is free and there is no service-call charge. A technician measures, looks at what is there now, and gives you a firm number with the door, the track, the spring and the labour in it — not a range that moves on installation day.

We don’t publish door prices. A non-insulated single-skin 8×7 and an insulated carriage-house 18×8 are different orders of magnitude, and a figure quoted before anyone has measured is either a guess or a starting price that climbs.

On timing: common sizes in common colours are usually available quickly, and anything special-order gets a firm date before you commit to it. Parts carry a 5-year warranty and our workmanship is covered for 90 days.