LOSING HEAT THROUGH YOUR GARAGE DOOR
Unfortunately, I know about this problem first hand because I am experiencing it too. We have in-floor heat in our garage and on snowy days when we bring a lot of moisture in to the garage we have the same problem with the doors freezing to the floor. We have been running our ceiling fan and a separate exhaust fan which has helped lower the humidity, but the problem still exists.
Another phenomenon that happens is called thermal bow. The door section expands on the warm side and contracts on the cold side, causing the door sections to bow inward on cold days. The warmer your garage, the more extreme the bow. We have seen larger doors bow as much as 1-2”, even with reinforcing installed struts on them. When this happens it allows cold air and wind to infiltrate the opening at the top, causing the ice buildup at the top of the door.
Some things you can do to help
- Keep running your dehumidifier or fan;
- Lower the temperature in your garage which will help decrease the amount of condensation. We keep ours at 55 degrees.
- Brush snow off your vehicles before you pull them into the garage.
Some things we can do to help with the problem
- We can install an additional type of weather stripping called top seal at the top of the top section which will cover this gap and prevent cold air from entering and freezing the top of the section;
- We can remove the top strut, straighten or “stress” the section the other way to compensate for the thermal bow, and reinstall the strut.
Sometimes the first option is enough and sometimes we need to do both to compensate for the thermal bowing.