Manual Garage Doors vs. Electric Garage Doors, Pros and Cons

As hard as it may seem to believe, some people actually prefer to open and close their garage doors themselves. This most certainly will raise some eyebrows on those who love to open and close their garage doors with a press of a button. So, in this age when most people prefer to have everything done for them automatically, why would someone choose a manual opening garage door? To answer that you need to look at the pros and cons of both manual and electric opening garage doors. Once you do that, you will see that those who choose to open their garage door themselves may not be so crazy after all.

A Closer Look at Manual Garage Doors

If you examine the good and bad points of manual garage doors you will see there are some valid points for wanting them.

Pros:

• Less Maintenance

Garage doors have a lot of working parts on them. Like anything that is mechanical in nature, those working parts need to be maintained. Rollers and chains have to be lubricated, springs need adjusting, and working parts also need to be periodically cleaned. Since manual garage doors have fewer working parts it translates to not having to do as much overall maintenance on them.

• Lower Initial Cost

One of the most expensive components on any garage door system is its automatic door opener. They can be up to half of the initial cost of the garage door purchase. Since manual garage doors do not require this component that is far less expensive to purchase.

• Less Prone to Downtime

To put it quite bluntly, there are simply fewer working parts on manual garage doors. This means that there are also fewer parts that can experience problems or fail altogether. Although you can override an automatic garage door and operate it manually, it is not very easy to do so. Most automatic garage door owners will simply wait for repairs and this means there is a lot more downtime for automatic garage doors.

Cons:

• Can Get Heavy

Depending on the type of material your manual garage door is made of, these can get very heavy, to say the least when opening and closing them. It also means that unlike automatic garage doors, children and people that are physically challenged cannot even use them.

• Limited to Lighter Garage Door Materials

One of the most beautiful looking garage door materials is wood. Unfortunately, it is also one of the heaviest garage door materials too. That means that it’s really not a good garage door material choice for manual garage door owners. The same goes for heavier metal garage doors.

• Not as Safe as Automatic Garage Doors

One of the nice traits of automatic garage doors is that they are made to operate very safely. They have several different safety sensors built into them to stop their operation if a problem is detected. There are no such safety systems on manually opened garage doors.

A Closer Look at Automatic Garage Doors

Here are some things to like and not like about automatic garage door openers:

Pros:

• Easy to open

All it takes is a push of a button on a remote or a wall-mounted switch to open any automatic garage door. There are few tasks that take such little effort to accomplish as opening an automatic garage door. This means even children and physically challenged individuals can easily open and close them.

• Has safety features built-in

Just given the fact that it operates on its own means that an automatic garage door opener needs to have built-in safety features. These come in the form of stops at the top and bottom of the device and with beam generated safety devices found towards the bottom of the garage door setup. So, if a person or vehicle is in the path of the garage door as it opens or closes the safety sensors will detect that and stop the garage door before an accident can happen.

• Can use heavier garage door materials

Unlike manually operated garage doors, heavier garage door materials are ok to use with an automatic garage door opener. Obviously, that’s because you are not doing the lifting yourself. That means highly decorative garage doors like wooden ones can be used with no problems if that garage door is on an automatically opened system.

• Can be opened remotely

Many automatic garage doors have remote controls that come with them. That means you can simply press a button and drive right into your garage without getting out of the car. As a matter of fact, these days there really is no place you can’t open your garage door from if you have a convenient Wi-Fi operated garage door.

Cons:

• Noisy when opening or closing

There are some garage door models that will are so loud they will wake up your family if they are sleeping. Although strides have been made to quiet garage doors, they are still noisy.

• More working part equals more potential problems

It stands to reason that the more working parts a garage door has the more prone it will be to breaking down. Automatic garage doors have a lot of more working parts than manually operated ones do.

• Higher initial cost

It was mentioned that garage door opening mechanisms can be very expensive. This is why it costs so much more to have an automatic garage door than it does to own a manually installed garage door.

Call a Garage Door Professional to Handle All of Your Garage Door Needs

No matter what type of garage door you have it will have some maintenance and repair needs from time to time. To get those done, it’s best to call competent garage door professionals like those at Sandy Springs Garage Door, LLC out of Sandy Springs, Georgia. They have the right equipment and know-how to take care of any garage door maintenance or repair issues that you need to get done.