Steel Garage Doors in Richardson, TX

Gauge and layer count, the two numbers that matter

Steel doors are sold by layer count. One layer is a single skin with air behind it. Two layers add a polystyrene board pressed against the back. Three layers sandwich foam between two steel skins, and that is the build that feels solid rather than tinny when you knock on it. Gauge is the thickness of the skin, and the scale runs backwards, so 24 gauge steel is thicker than 27.

Builder-grade doors on a lot of Richardson streets are 27 or 28 gauge with a single skin. That is why so many of them develop a wavy bottom section by their fifteenth summer. Moving up to a thicker skin adds a couple of hundred dollars to a new door and takes most of the flex, drum rattle and boom out of it. If a quote does not name the gauge, ask for it in writing before you sign.

What a 130 degree year does to a steel panel

DFW normals put 20.2 days a year at or above 100°F and 29.2 nights at or below freezing. That is roughly a 130°F range across a single year, and a south or west facing steel door lives through all of it. Steel grows when it is hot and shrinks when it is cold. The movement per panel is small, but it happens every day of the summer and every cold night of the winter, and repeated movement is what backs hinge screws out and works finish loose along the cut edges.

Practically, that means two things on a steel door here. Check the hinge and bracket fasteners once a year rather than waiting for a rattle, and touch up any chip or scratch the week it happens instead of next spring. Bare steel behind a broken paint film is where rust starts, and the bottom section takes the worst of it because that is where water sits after one of the 37.01 inches of rain the airport records in an average year.

Hail, and why steel shows it worst

North Texas gets a lot of hail. Tarrant County has recorded 126 severe hail days since 2000, second in the country only to Potter County up in Amarillo, and Richardson sits in the same storm corridor. The reference event is 11 April 2016, when the largest hailstone on record for the NWS Fort Worth forecast area came down at 5.25 inches. In Wylie, about 12 to 15 miles north-east of here, 80% of homes were affected and damage passed $300 million.

A single-layer steel skin has nothing behind it, so a stone that hits it leaves a visible dimple and the panel stays dimpled. A foam-filled door is backed the whole way across, which changes what a hit does to it. We do not publish impact ratings, because the honest position is that hail damage depends on stone size, fall angle and how the door was built, and nobody can promise a garage door will come through a 2016-grade storm. What we can say is that dents on a steel door are cosmetic until the section is creased or the rollers start binding, and section replacement runs an estimated $255 to $540 per section fitted.

Where steel is the wrong choice

Steel is a poor answer in two situations. The first is a house where the door is the main thing you see from the street and a flat stamped panel looks pasted on. A wood look or carriage face carries the elevation better and costs less than timber. The second is a garage that shares a wall or ceiling with a bedroom or a converted room. A bare single-layer steel door in that position radiates heat all afternoon, and no amount of gauge fixes that. Insulation does.

There is also the matching problem. Around 40% of Richardson homes were built between 1970 and 1979, and a door from that era usually has a panel profile nobody stamps any more. If the existing door is otherwise sound, one replacement section may be possible in a close but not exact profile. If it is not, you are choosing between a door that looks patched and a full replacement. That call belongs to you, not to whoever is quoting.