Even is you are not a handyman type, insulating your garage door is something you should definitely look into. It is one of the simplest ways to accomplish energy savings – and the investment in time and effort is small as well.

I am the kind of guy that will usually contract out a lot of the work I do around the house, but after looking at all the reasons to turn this into an item on my “honey-do” list, I went for it. Here are some of the things you will want to consider before you farm this one out:
You have to find a contractor that will do this for you. This is a small job. You should be able to get your garage doors insulated in a single day, if you go ahead and buy an installation kit. If you do find a guy who will come out and do this, it will most likely be a weekend warrior, and getting good references, etc may be difficult.

Everyone has a buddy or a brother-in-law that will do this kind of work – but you saw them at the cookout last weekend – do you really want them anywhere near your garage doors with tools?

If you hire someone to do it, you will pay more – most likely a lot more. Do it yourself, and save a ton.

The best place to find complete kits to do this project is usually online. Your local Home Depot will most likely have the pieces, but you have to do the measuring and cutting, and make sure you have it all together. If you can figure out who made your garage door, and it is a name brand, a quick search may turn up some garage door insulation kits made just for your model. This saves a ton of time and aggravation – it is just so much easier to have all the pieces and parts for a project together before you start.

If you can’t find a kit online, you will have to piece one together yourself. Before you run off to the home store, you need to take care of a few things:

Measure the doors (duh). Take note of how the panels fold when you raise and lower the garage doors, too. Will there be a pinch point? You may want to leave some space, or taper the garage door insulation off towards the edge of the panels.

Take a look at how the panels go together – often the framework has gaps in it, which you can slide the edges of foam panels into. This is a huge timesaver, and cuts adhesives out of the picture.

Look at the sides and bottom of the door to see if you need to replace the weather-stripping there. More on this below…

Here’s what you will most likely need to buy:

The insulation itself: This will be foam core aluminum backed, or simple Styrofoam panels in most cases.

Weather-stripping for the sides of the door. This is going to vary widely. It could be fiber brush type, or simply a rubber flap. Try to stay with whatever type your doors came with if you can. You will be less likely to have issues with the doors catching on things when they are opening and closing.

Take a look at the bottom of the door too. This is something that may not come immediately to mind when considering this project, but you can lose a lot of heat if this isn’t taken care of. The cold air will just flow in underneath the door, an then it won’t matter how well you did insulating the door panels. This is also a favorite avenue for creepy crawlies. Nothing like having ants in your shirt while you are trying to change the oil, huh?

Adhesives, tape (for seams between foam panels), hand tools, a utility knife and a few hours round out the supplies for this job.

That should do it. I think you’ll find this to be an easy weekend project that you can finish in time to watch the game! Be sure to take a look at my other article where I explain exactly why this is worth doing – I think you’ll be surprised by how much money and energy garage door insulation can save you.