Garage door insulation is important for a variety of reasons. There are also a few different types of garage door insulation so keeping track of them can be a bit of a headache, but hopefully with a little more knowledge of the different types of insulation and what they can do for you it will all become clearer. With that said it’s probably pretty obvious as to what this article is going to be about, if you guess garage door insulation then you are correct. There are really three different types of garage door insulation to talk about, there is natural insulation that comes naturally from the materials used, built-in or installed insulation and aftermarket insulation. Of all three they really go in order of efficiency that way. Natural insulation is obviously the most efficient, built in is slightly less efficient and then after market insulation is usually less efficient than that. Then there is the case of the two different types of insulation, there is temperature which should seem obvious as well as sound which again is relatively self explanatory. In some ways these two things have a lot in common, but they also have some differences so it is important to take those into account when you are thinking about which one is most important to you or if they are equally so. In this article we will be focusing on noise reduction, but be on the look out for another article in the near future about temperature control.
Noise reduction for many is a big priority, especially in the garage. Your garage door has to do the job of your walls to keep out and in sound while still being movable and durable for years. It is a tough thing to ask of a material and so there are upsides and downsides to the materials you use for your garage door. Wood is the best natural sound reducer out of the materials that you usually have to choose from. Garage doors made out of aluminum and steel often have hollow parts that can make things seem even louder as they reverberate. Fiberglass doors have mixed reviews and so really depend on a lot of factors aside from just the fact that they are fiberglass. When it comes to reducing the amount of noise leaving your garage or getting through your garage door then it is easy to see that most of the time wood is the best choice. However, this is just from the natural side of things. In order to really get the full picture you need to look at what other types of noise reduction insulation there is available to you.
Many metal garage doors, the aluminum and steel ones mentioned before are available with insulation built into them. This means that the garage doors are able to be made with your needs in mind and filled with some sort of additional insulation. This obviously comes at a cost, but the durability of this type of garage door over something like a wooden garage door which naturally has better insulation may make up for that seeing as the insulation will last you a great deal longer. In many cases if you go for the higher quality insulation and doors you will actually save money in the long run because the insulation will be better, but will last you longer meaning that you essentially paid less because of the cost of another wooden door for example would be more expensive. Getting the built in insulation along with a quality installation is usually the best choice for those that want to minimize the amount noise that gets through their garage doors.
The last type of insulation available is the aftermarket kind. This can go anywhere from some garage door insulation that you find at your hardware store for a few dollars to something that you get your local garage door professional to install for you after you find that your garage is too noisy or you find that at least your neighbors think so. Most of the time these types of solutions are in response to a problem that you didn’t think you would be having, like your kids band starting up their practices in your garage. While these types of kits and installations are certainly better than nothing they do have their drawbacks. Oftentimes instead of being designed specifically for your problem and your garage door they are designed for all garage doors and lots of problems. This leads them to be more of a coverall and can leave them doing very little in fact to help your problem specifically. After market insulation also has the obstacle of not being able to get inside your garage door, which can be done for built in garage door insulation obviously. This means that you can be left with unsightly insulation solutions that make your garage door heavier than it needs to be and ends up requiring you to get your garage door opener recalibrated, and all the while it will be doing very little for your garage door’s noise problems.
In the end it is pretty easy to see that if you think you might need insulation of any sort for your garage door then you should really opt for either something with a natural insulation or noise reduction or just go for something with built in insulation that you can customize to your needs. This will allow you to choose the thickness and make up of your insulation so you know what you are getting and what sort of noise reduction you can expect to get out of your garage door. After market insulation solutions can be quite expensive and leave you fixing problems that you didn't have but leaving the ones that you did. If you have small problems and are in need of small specific fixes you may want to contact your local garage door professional to see if they have a solution otherwise you may end up wasting your money on something that just doesn’t work. However, with that said there is no shame in trying a five dollar solution you find online before calling up and asking for a legitimate recommendation.