Proper Weather Sealant for Garage Doors

If I asked you to name a few of the key objects that comprise your home, you would probably be able to readily name objects that are familiar to most of us. You would probably start by mentioning the dining table, the carpets, a coffee table and the sofa; with all likelihood you would be able to accurately list all the nice appliances, accessories and the cutlery that’s safely stored in your kitchen’s drawers.

It’s likely, though, that you would miss out on one of the objects in your home that is so critical to your and your family’s wellbeing and safety, that you’d be surprised to see how often it gets overlooked: your garage door. Come to think about it, for many of us the garage door is the last thing we see of our place when we leave for work, shopping, holidays or school… and the first that we meet when we come back to our home sweet home. Garage doors are an essential part of many homes and for good reasons: they keep our cars, the beloved carton and wooden boxes filled with objects from our own past and our home, safe from strangers and wild animals, from inclement weather and pests. Or, rather, they should.

Why Finding Proper Weather Sealant for Your Garage Door is Important

Much like a chain is only as strong as its weakest ring, a garage door can only be as effective as its accessories. We are talking about all those essential stripping and sealants that effectively keep rodents, critters, dust, leaves, wind, cold and other unpleasant things where they ought to be, that is OUT. If we are so easy to forget such an essential part of our home as our garage door, how often do we come to think about the sealants that make our garage door an effective barrier against undesired intrusions of any kind? More than likely, the only moment we even think that garage doors need weather or any other kind of stripping is when they’re in need of repair, when we hear the wind howling from around the frame of the door, see water pouring in from outside when it rains or feel that the temperature is too cold inside our garage, or worse when we find out that our storage boxes have deteriorated or have been munched by rodents… and if they are there, could they even be in our kitchen now?! These are all very good reasons to start taking a serious look at our garage door and, as with any key component to ours and our family’s safety, think about what’s needed to keep its accessories and stripping in good and efficient order.

So, let’s say you start getting a closer look at the rubber and plastic parts on the edges and on the sides of your garage door, and you actually see a section that, in not too short a time, could become a serious issue.

Garage Doors Repairs: The Do-It-Yourself Way?

If you are anything of a Do-It-Yourself person, your first thought will be to repair it yourself. You might think that you aren’t scared of stripes of rubber and plastics. If - you think - you need a replacement or a spare part, provided that you know which one you effectively need to replace, you believe that you can surely find it on the internet.  After all, nowadays, you can purchase anything and everything online. So you visit Amazon and search for keywords you are sure will show you exactly what you need to buy… and they do, with more than 1600 search results being offered by searching for the simple query “garage door seal”. Slowly, that subtle feeling of “I-need-some-help-here” starts creeping in, so you decide to visit the nearest Home Depot store where a nice and prepared clerk shows you where the weather stripping and garage door accessories are.

After a few seconds of browsing through the available options, your eyes are captured by a 16 ft. Garage Door Bottom Seal Kit and soon after that by a 20 ft. Nail-On Garage Door Bottom Seal, and again by a 10 ft. Bulb Seal Replacement Insert with 1/4 in. T-End… or was it a Bottom Seal Insert Forms a U-Shape with 3/8 in. T-Ends that you needed... or a Weather-strip Seal Replacement... or EDPM Rubber Garage Door Bottom Seal or a Garage Door Weather-strip Seal, or Door Bulb Bottom Astragal Weather Seal?

In about 15 minutes you realize that your idea to See-Buy-Replace might not have been the best idea after all.

You are still deciding what exactly you could do with a bulb seal replacement with T-End, provided that you actually knew what that exactly is, that your head starts aching at the thought of getting back home with two nice, shiny and new weather seals (because you decided to also take the astragal weather seal to avoid any risk) only to realize that you got the wrong ones! They don’t fit so you cut them shakily, and you end up making a real mess, after having spent (wasted) more than a few hard-earned dollars and invested almost a full day of your precious (and invaluable) time.