Garage Door Weather Seal Replacement in Los Angeles
Stand inside your garage with the lights off and the door shut. Any daylight along the bottom edge, or up either side, is the cheapest component on the whole assembly asking to be renewed. That is the rubber strip along the base, together with the vinyl stop moulding up both jambs and across the header. For the money it does more visible work than any of the expensive components, keeping out rain, dust, leaves, draughts and everything that would sooner live in your garage than outside it.
Replacement starts at $95 and takes well under an hour.
How to Tell Yours Has Gone
Daylight under a closed door is the obvious one, and it is worth looking at from inside with the lights off. Then a bottom seal that has gone hard and flat rather than staying flexible, cracks along its length, sections torn away entirely, or a strip that no longer sits in its retainer and hangs loose. Water crossing the threshold in a winter storm, leaves collecting inside the door, dust film across everything in a hillside garage, and the arrival of rodents or insects are all the same fault showing up in different ways.
Sun Damage, Retainers and an Uneven Slab
Rubber and vinyl in this city do not usually fail from cold or from wear. They fail from ultraviolet, and a south or west facing door takes an enormous annual dose of it. The material goes chalky, loses its flexibility, shrinks slightly and then cracks, which is why a seal that looked perfectly serviceable two summers ago can be in pieces now. It is also why we fit EPDM rubber rather than the cheaper vinyl on any exposed door, since it holds up considerably better under that kind of exposure.
The bottom seal slides into an aluminium retainer along the base of the door, and the retainer itself is frequently the real problem on older doors, being either corroded, bent or missing entirely. We replace both where needed. Uneven concrete is the other common issue and it is very common in this city, where garage floors have settled or were poured with a slope to the drive. Where a floor dips, a standard seal will never close the gap and the answer is a taller bulb seal or a threshold seal bonded to the floor itself, which our technician will measure for rather than guess at.
Jamb Seal, Header Seal and Threshold
The vinyl stop moulding running up both sides and across the top is what actually seals the door against the frame, and on a great many Los Angeles garages it is the original builder's material, brittle and pulling away from the timber. It is inexpensive to renew and makes a noticeable difference to draughts and light ingress. A floor threshold seal, glued to the concrete just outside the door, is the answer where water runs toward the garage down a sloping driveway, and a good many hillside properties here need one.
Seals, Retainers and Cost
A new bottom seal fitted to an existing retainer starts at $95. Seal and new aluminium retainer together start at $145. Jamb and header stop moulding replaced across a single door starts at $125 and a double from $165. Floor threshold seals are quoted by the opening width. All of it is worth doing during a tune up, covered on ourtune up page, since the labour overlaps almost entirely. A door too far gone to seal against anything is a different conversation, and our garage door installation page has it.
