Last week, as part of my garage door overhaul, I installed two upgrades to my garage door itself…as opposed to the upgrade to the control system(the ratgdo board). When picking out new products, I do my research.
One was the Green Hinge System. You can find the Green Hinge direct on their website, or through Amazon(click here) if you prefer. Garage door mechanics aren’t my area of expertise, but the Green Hinge system is a spring loaded hinge for garage doors. The tension of the hinge pushes the door flush to the frame. This reduces the entry of cold air, wind, dust, bugs and other critters from entering. It also makes it harder for someone to try to grab the garage door release through the gaps in the door. The Green Hinge was created by a small business owner whose garage stored items were freezing in the cold Wisconsin winter.
The installation target was an original garage door installed with the building in 1976, so the door is nearly 50 years old, and still had the original hinges. The rollers had been replaced twenty years ago or so, so replaced them with nylon rollers rated for 100,000 cycles at the same time. In order to get it to work properly we had to strip two layers of weatherstripping that not only had been on for years, but had been painted over to the point I didn’t even realize it was there(need to touch up the paint unfortunately at some point though). The hinges don’t rattle quite as much as the 50 year old ones, although if I wanted the door to be even more silent, between that and the new rollers, I’d need to replace the garage door opener motor, track, and/or chain as well(maybe next year).
The new hinges did create another problem. Due to the slight shift in door alignment, the gap at the bottom of the door was not perfect. This was partially due to some cracked concrete I need to patch making it not level, but partially because we discovered the seal was actually nailed on on top of another, also nailed on seal. The new bottom seal uses a track, so the seal can be replaced in the track if it wears out with a new one without nailing it into the frame.
After all that, I took temperature readings. I have a sensor connected to my Home Assistant instance that sits right next to the garage door. Looking at the sensor overlaid on the outdoor temperature sensor, the temperature in the garage was higher on average during a snowstorm today than last month’s cold snap. There were no drafts. So, all in all, this was a success.
As one side note, the handyman who I hired to help install them did run into trouble due to the old weatherstripping, called the support line, and received instant support from someone with hands on installation experience. He asked for pictures and provided the key information that revealed the source of the problem, even though the handyman was skeptical. I can’t say there isn’t more cosmetic work to do when the weather gets warmer, painting, patching the concrete to level the bottom, etc. But it made an old door operate like a much younger one.