Every garage needs a garage door for security, to keep the weather out and to allow your car to enter and exit easily. There are several designs of garage door that are all functional and easy to use to a degree, but by far the easiest to use and the one that makes the best use of space has to be the roll up garage doors.

When I was a young man, my father had one of the early Roll-a-Doors fitted to his garage and it was a real point of interest to all his neighbors who'd come around just to see this new fangled invention in operation. I'm sure they were secretly all hoping the dang thing would come crashing down on the hood of his new car, as my father, just like me was a shrewd businessman and was probably the riches guy on out block so he was one of the first who could afford one of the new roll up garage doors.

Nowadays, they're everywhere and are relatively far cheaper to buy now than they've ever been. So, as I have one of these on my own garage, its only fair that I write about it!

How Do Roll Up Garage Doors Work?

Roll up garage doors are pretty simple in design and operation in that they consist of a steel or aluminum roller fixed above the door opening to which is attached a horizontally flexible door made from a series of connected narrow and long sections of either aluminum, steel, wood or fiberglass.The long sections are guided by steel or aluminum guide rails either side of the garage door opening which are permanently fixed to the walls.

When you roll the door up, the many narrow interconnected sections roll onto the roller above and are neatly stored out of sight. Other designs have wider sections that simply follow the guides overhead and are stored flat against the ceiling of the garage. Pull it down again and the narrow sections all follow the guides and close to form a solid looking door. Roll up garage doors are surprisingly robust and can withstand light knocks but will dent if enough pressure is brought to bear on them.

Commercial roll up garage doors are far more robust than their domestic counterparts and are often made from rolled steel section for added strength. They are usually found on commercial premises such as industrial units, auto repair garages, warehouses, stores etc.

The raising and lowering mechanism can be either manual or motor driven and can also be remotely controlled for the gadget lovers.

What are the Benefits of Roll Up Garage Doors?

The main benefits of having roll up garage doors fitted to your garage is their unobtrusiveness and ease of use. Because they are relatively lightweight, they are easy for a woman to operate where other, heavier forms of garage doors need more strength to open and close. That doesn't include the mechanically operated garage doors, of course, but mechanically operated roll up garage doors generally use less power than other types.

Another benefit is that they are more disposed to being opened and closed more often, meaning they will go for much longer than other designs before they will need maintenance and repair. This is one of the longer term cost saving benefits, where they may be more costly at the outset but over time they will actually save you money over some other designs of garage doors.

When I look back at that garage of my fathers all those years ago, it would have been the late 1960s, and see the changes that have gone on since then, its quite refreshing to see that the design of these roll up garage doors hasn't really changed much in all that time. Which proves that a when something is well designed off the bat, it doesn't need much modification as the years go by.