One of the main purposes of your exterior doors is to regulate the temperature inside the house. This is also the function that keeps your electrical bills at its minimum.
If you turn on your heater during the winter season, the doors will keep the inside temperature warm for a long time even if you had shut your heater off. Gaps in the doors also allow strong winds to penetrate the houses and could raise your roof off the structure during storms and tornadoes. Without fixing them, insects and other pests can enter your homes through these openings.
Here are the ways on how to repair gaps on your doors:

• Check your doors and determine which ones do not seal properly. You may start with the front door because it is of a smaller scale and you can proceed to your garage door later.
• Inspect the hinges of the door to see if they are screwed tightly. There are some instances wherein the reason why the door has a gap is because the door is simply misaligned.
  • Unscrew the hinges of the door and properly fit the fixture carefully.
  • Mark the areas of the door where the new screws should be placed and drill holes on them.
  • Place the new screws carefully into the hinges and test the door if it opens and closes well.
  • Once the alignment of your doors is already fixed, you can now add weather stripping to the edges of your door. Weather strips will seal the gap between the frame and the door and this will help maintain the temperatures inside the house.
  • There will also be instances wherein the gaps are due to uneven door angles.
    • You can fix this by using a compass to determine the correct angle of the door edge. This can be very useful when fixing gaps in entry doors.
    • You can use a jigsaw to cut off that excess part of the edge and the door will close perfectly after that.
    • You can also add weather stripping to the garage door to seal the edges.

Garage doors are one of the parts of the home that people use the most. Because of the constant operation of these doors, there will definitely come a time when the garage door and the door openers will become faulty. Once this happens, you will need to do some minor troubleshooting of your own before contacting the professionals. This can save you money but if you do not do it correctly you can just make the problem severe.
Here are some basic troubleshooting things that you can do with your garage door openers:

• Determine if the problem is in the lift system of the opener or the door mechanism itself. If you are not sure, you can check both systems. Start with the door mechanism troubleshooting.
• Manually inspect the rollers of the track. Bring the door down and close it.
  • Go to the brackets and see if there are any bolts and screws that have loosened up.
  • Tighten and secure them if you see any.
  • If you tighten screws, make sure that the part that you are securing them into is correctly aligned so that the performance of the door opener will not be jeopardized.
  • Look at the tracks and see if they are aligned to one another. They must also be straight so that the garage door can be pulled up or down swiftly.
  • The garage door tracks must also be inspected for any dents or malformations.
    • You need to make sure that the tracks are in correct form so as to avoid interruptions and pressure during operation.
    • You can use a rubber mallet to slowly align the tracks to the original shape.
    • Go to the lift system of your door opener. You can start the troubleshooting process with the basics such as the remote control. Oftentimes, people complain about their door openers not working when in fact they just need to replace the batteries of the remote.
    • During the garage door installation, observe how the professional technician connect and program the door opener, the remote control and the garage door itself. This way, you will know what to do when you reprogram your remote control to fix some minor control issues.

In order for your garage doors to be eco-friendly, you need to make sure that the door will be able to regulate the temperatures inside the house. Through this, the heating and cooling system will not be used too frequently which leads to saving energy and the environment. For this reason, you need to make sure that you install weatherstripping in your doors. Weatherstripping can also protect your garage from snow, water and even insects. This project is fairly easy and it does not take much of your time too.

1. Begin with the garage door open. In order for you to manipulate the garage door manually, you need to disconnect it from the garage door opener by detaching the release cord.
2. Since you will be installing new weather strips on your door, you would first need to remove the old stripping. Grab a pry bar and use it to separate the old weather strips from the door jamb. Do this carefully so that the door or the jamb will not be damaged. Simply insert the pry bar in between the strips and carefully separate them from each other.
3. Most weather strips that are sold in hardware stores are made with different lengths. If you have a double- car garage door at home, then you can simply use the entire stripping. If the garage door is only for one car, you need to measure the door jamb and cut the stripping to its appropriate size.
4. Install the weatherstripping for the top jamb first. Manually close door to begin. Start with one corner and make sure that the strip will fully touch the corner of the jamb. Hammer the stripping into place until you reach the other corner. Make certain that the stripping will slightly touch the residential garage doors. This creates a seal to separate the inside temperature from the outside.
5. If the stripping is too short, grab another one and simply connect the two pieces without any spaces.
6. Use the same technique when installing the strips for the right and left garage door jambs. Always see to it that the flap of the stripping will touch the door.

The garage door opener is one of the most important things that you need to have in your garage. Your opener does not only allow you to automatically open and close the door safely but it also keeps the house secured by locking it without the need of keys. Choosing a door opener might be a challenge since there are a lot of brands and types available out there.
Here are few things that you must consider when buying one for your garage:

• Power– The power of your door opener will be measured in Horsepower and this is very important. The higher the horsepower of your opener, the more weight it will be able to carry. Do not forget that the actual garage door is very heavy and your door opener must be able to lift that weight effortlessly. You have to know the weight of your garage door so you would know how much horsepower you will need. If you own a unit that can span up to two cars, it may have an average weight of 350 pounds. A ½ HP motor will be enough to function in this type of door but if you own a heavier type like a carriage door, you might want to choose a ¾ HP motor.

• Drive Type– There are different types of drives or tracks for the garage doors.
  • Chain– This is the cheapest type of drive for the garage door. But because this type uses a metal chain, it will be noisy when the garage door is operating.
  • Screw– this type still uses a steel rod so it may still create noise but new models are lined with plastic to lessen the noise. This type also operates faster than the chain type.
  • Belt– this is the quietest type because the belt does not create a metal to metal sound during operation. If you have a bedroom adjacent or above the garage door, then having this quiet opener will be the best option.

• Safety Features- The garage door is among the entry doors of the house and people pass through it all the time. Look for features like invisible sensors to prevent the door from accidentally closing when someone is still under it.