Is it time to clean your Richmond garage door?

You’ve got a nice garage door out there on your Richmond garage but even nice garage doors get dirty. From time to time, you may want to give that garage door a bath. For that matter, if the door is dirty, the garage is probably dirty, too. You can wash the entire garage door.

One way to clean a dirty garage door on your Richmond garage is to hire a company with a power washer to come out and clean your garage and garage door. Or you can rent a power washer yourself. The other option requires additional elbow grease and/or effective cleaning solution.

Even with a power washer, it’s a good idea to use an effective cleaner and a brush. By brush, this refers to the kind that attaches to a handle, such as a broom handle. Gives you the leverage and reach to get up high without necessarily dripping all over yourself.

Clorox, the bleach maker, recommends using a mix of ½-cup of bleach to a gallon of water. But bleach is harsh and you may want to opt for something else. As with any cleaning solution, you probably want to try it out somewhere as inconspicuous as possible to make sure it doesn’t have a negative effect on the base material or the paint or other surface coating.

There are a number of other cleaning products you may want to use. The key is that, while you want something that doesn’t damage the material or surface, you also want a cleaner that washes off easily.

Another consideration is the rubber weatherstripping around your garage door. You’ll want to clean this, too. But you don’t want to use anything that will dry out the rubber. It might make sense to wipe it down with a damp cloth.

You also want to be careful not to hit the inside mechanism that operates your garage door. Most of these parts are metal and can rust. Many of the parts that operate opening and closing your garage door require lubrications. You don’t want to wash away the lubricants.

In fact, when you’re done cleaning your garage door, it’s not a bad idea to have some maintenance done on your garage door. This will ensure that all adjustments are proper and everything that should be lubricated is properly lubricated.

Of course, when washing your garage door, you should prepare for the experience. Choose a warm day when you won’t mind getting wet. Wear clothes that are appropriate for the occasion. 

• Fill a bucket with water and your gentle cleaning solution
• Wet down the surface you’re cleaning
• Scrub the surface with a soapy brush being careful not to do any damage but scrubbing hard enough to loosen the dirt
• Rinse down the surface 
• Wipe down the weather stripping
• Adjust and lubricate the inside garage door opening mechanism

Some folks even wax their garage doors. That’s certainly an option, assuming you won’t get too much wax into texture of the surface where you can’t get it out.

Hiring someone to power wash your Richmond garage door is a nice way to get the job done while you make other use of the time. But, you want to make sure they do a good job and they don’t damage anything.

On the other hand, if you do it yourself, you can save some money, as long as you do it right.

What are the UV rays of the sun doing to your Lake Villa garage door?

The sun is incessant in its attack on your Lake Villa garage door. It bears down without mercy drying out the wood, fiberglass or metal and draining the color of the paint or material. It doesn’t care how your garage door looks and it doesn’t care about it’s effect on how your garage door works.

Have you ever seen a badly faded garage door in your Lake Villa neighborhood? Of course, you have. How did it get that way? Mostly, it got that way because of the sun.

There’s an ultra-violet component to the sun’s rays that are destructive. They’ll fade the paint on your car as sure as they’ll fade the paint on your garage door.

UV rays play a nasty game with the molecular structure of materials. They dry out the rubber weather strip around the garage door. But they don’t stop there. They go after the garage doors themselves.

The longer the sun bombards your garage door with its UV rays, the more brittle and less flexible your garage door becomes. Cracks can appear in your garage door whether it’s made of fiberglass, metal or wood. Overtime, your garage door would disintegrate. 

The color will fade, and a chalky substance will appear on the surface. Moving parts will lose their lubricants. And the longer you operate mechanical parts without proper lubrication, the more wear and damage they experience.

The first thing to do to protect your garage door from the harmful effects of the sun’s UV rays is to lubricate moving parts with sufficient frequency, and the proper lubricants. This will make a tremendous difference in the life-span of your garage door and garage door opener (keep in mind that the garage door opener has to work harder when bearings and hinges on the garage door are not properly lubricated).

Insulating the garage door will help to keep the sun’s rays from turning the inside of your garage door into an oven. But what about protecting the garage door itself?

You can protect your garage door by painting it with a paint or varnish that is resistant to the UV rays, such as a Valspar or similar product. You can also apply a protective film on the garage door.

You may also want to wash your garage door once or twice a year to protect it from corrosive materials.

If you’re choosing a new garage door, you want to choose a door with the aesthetic appeal you’re looking for, but you also want one that is easy to maintain. You can ask your garage door technician for tips about which garage door will work best for you in your area and considering the exposure of your garage door – whether it’s facing South, North, East or West.

The sun will beat down on your Lake Villa garage door and there isn’t much you can do about that. But if you know what it’s UV rays are doing to your garage door, you can take steps to protect the door.