Garage Door Weatherproofing & Weatherstripping in Calgary

The bottom seal is a rubber or vinyl strip that slides into an aluminium retainer along the bottom edge of the door. When the door closes, it squashes against the slab and fills small dips in the concrete. Calgary is hard on it: road salt, gravel and the weight of the door wear the edge, deep cold makes it stiff enough to crack, and summer heat on a south- or west-facing door softens it until it tears.

The sides and top of the door seal against stop moulding nailed to the jambs and header. It has a rigid part that holds it in place and a soft flap that rests lightly against the face of the door. Over the years the vinyl shrinks in the cold, the flap curls, and nails work loose, leaving a strip of daylight up each side.

Many Calgary garage slabs are no longer flat. Frost heave lifts one corner, settling drops another, and some floors were poured with a slope toward the door. A bottom seal can only stretch so far, so on an uneven floor a threshold seal glued to the concrete can close the gap from below. It also acts as a small dam against meltwater running in from the driveway. Threshold seals are quoted on site because the right one depends on the size of the gap and how the floor drains.

After a Chinook melt followed by a hard freeze, water under the door can freeze the seal to the slab. If you press the button, the opener pulls against the ice. At best the seal tears; at worst one side breaks free first and the door lifts unevenly, which can pull a cable off its drum or strain the opener.

A torn bottom seal lets more than cold air in. Spring meltwater and slush off your car run under the door and pool where the bottom brackets and cables sit, which is how many cable failures start. Mice also find their way in through gaps not much wider than a pencil, and a garage full of stored food, bird seed or pet food is an open invitation in the fall. A sound bottom seal, tight side stops and a threshold seal where the floor dips close all of those routes at once.

Weatherstripping and insulation solve different problems. Seals stop air and water moving around the door; insulation slows heat moving through it. On an uninsulated single-skin door, new seals will cut drafts and keep out snow, but the garage will still drop close to outdoor temperature on a −30 °C night. Insulated doors carry an R-value rating, and higher numbers resist heat flow better, but the real-world result also depends on how well the perimeter is sealed and how leaky the rest of the garage is.

We replace weatherstripping across the city, from older detached garages in the NW to newer attached garages in the SE and SW, plus Chestermere, Airdrie and the surrounding towns, and the per-foot price is the same wherever you live. A seal check is part of every tune-up, current per-foot rates sit on our price list, and new seals are backed by our written warranty.