Where are those leaves in your Wilmot garage coming from? How’s the weather stripping under your garage door?

Leaves on the concrete floor of your Wilmot garage can cause a slip hazard if they’re wet. Besides, when they’re wet, they’re so difficult to sweep up. You sweep but they stick to the floor and slide under the broom. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could keep them out of the garage?

As it turns out, for the most part, you can. Of course, when the garage door is wide open, the wind blowing through Wilmot is apt to blow leaves into your garage. But what about the leaves that seem to come in when the garage door is closed?

A garage door is designed to take a weather strip at the bottom so that the door can close tightly. There are a few designs of rubber stripping for the bottom of a garage door. In some cases, the weather strip is simply a flat strip of rubber with a lip on the outside. It’s about a quarter-inch thick and runs the length of the door. The lip is tipped downward so that, when the garage door closes, it is sure to push against the concrete and create a seal.

Other types are more effective. They’re generally the same but with different mounting methods. They employ what is essentially a tube of rubber at the bottom of the door. The tube is about an inch-or-so deep. Running from side to side at the bottom of the garage door, when the garage door comes down, the tube is pushed down onto the concrete creating an effective seal.

As with things rubber, the gasket at the bottom of your garage door will harden over time. Eventually, the hardened rubber is liable to crack. Cracks will grow and, eventually, pieces will break off. In the process, the integrity of the seal at the bottom of your Wilmot garage door will be lost.

A visual inspection of your garage door weather stripping will generally expose any problems. Check for cracks, breaks and hardness. Also, make sure the garage door is adjusted correctly so that the gasket fully engages with the concrete. Your probably want to check the gasket around the sides and top of your garage door, too. They help to seal out the elements.

Another indication of how your garage door weather stripping is doing is when you find leaves or water inside your garage. The weather in Wilmot is often brutal, especially with winter coming. 

Should you insulate your Lake Geneva garage door?

With the passing of Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer has passed. Inevitably, temperatures will grow colder and colder. You may not want to dwell on this fact too long just yet, but it’s coming. Though you can’t stop the approach of another Lake Geneva winter, you can take steps to mitigate the effects of winter.

One thing you can do is to insulate your Lake Geneva garage. If you keep your car in the garage, this will help make it easier for the car to start on those cold winter days while protecting the car a bit from the elements.

Maybe your garage is already insulated. But is the garage door insulated? If the garage isn’t insulated, and you decide it’s time to insulate your garage, don’t forget the garage door.

Garage doors are often made of lightweight material so the garage door opener doesn’t have too much trouble opening and closing the garage door, whether that describes you or a mechanical device at the ceiling of the garage. Thankfully, they make materials to insulate your garage door that are lightweight, too.

Insulating the garage door helps to complete the process of keeping out the cold. Adding a heater to the garage can make the environment in the garage hospitable throughout some of the coldest days of winter. And the insulation will help to keep the cost of heating the garage to a minimum.

Insulation also has a sound deadening effect. But, if you only have insulation in the walls of the garage the garage door is the weak link in your effort to ward off the cold and sound from outside the garage (more accurately, keep the heat from escaping from the garage).

It’s also important that the weather stripping around the garage is in good shape. The heat will seep out wherever it can. If the weather stripping is porous, the heat will find the leaks.

One question before you start insulating your garage door is to consider the condition of your garage door. Is the door 10-years or more old? Can you see light in the daytime coming through the gaps between the garage door panels? If so, there air will pass through those gaps, too.

If your Lake Geneva garage door is too old, or in bad condition, it may not make sense to insulate the garage door. You might be better off simply replacing the garage door.