Garage Door Installation in Sandton & Surrounds

Sectional, roller or tip-up

Sectional doors are the default for a reason: they lift straight up and run back along the ceiling, so nothing swings out into the driveway and you can park right up against the door. They need headroom above the opening — typically around 300mm for a standard track system, less with a low-headroom kit.

Roller doors coil into a barrel above the opening and need almost no backroom, which makes them the answer for garages with beams, storage racks or a low ceiling running back. Tip-up doors are the single-panel type that swings out and up; they are cheap and simple, but they claim the space in front of the door and they are the type most often replaced during a renovation.

Where headroom is genuinely tight, the honest answer is sometimes a roller door rather than a low-headroom sectional kit, and we will say so at the measuring stage rather than after the door arrives.

Materials and what they suit

Steel is the workhorse: strong, well priced, available in a wide range of finishes, and the standard on most new installations. Its weak point is corrosion at the bottom edge where water sits, which is why the bottom seal and the floor level matter more than people expect.

Aluminium is lighter and does not rust, which makes it a sensible choice on exposed openings and on very wide doubles where weight is a concern. Timber gives the appearance people usually want on a period property, at the cost of real weight, seasonal movement and a maintenance commitment. Glass fibre sits in between — light, stable, and the most forgiving in a coastal or high-moisture position.

Measuring: headroom, side room and backroom

Three clearances decide whether a door can be fitted at all. Headroom is the distance from the top of the opening to the ceiling or the nearest obstruction. Side room is the space either side of the opening for the vertical tracks — usually around 90mm each side. Backroom is how far the horizontal tracks can run into the garage, which must exceed the door height plus the motor rail.

Obstructions are the usual surprise: a lintel, a lighting rail, a roller-shutter box from a previous door, a geyser, or a beam that crosses exactly where the tracks want to go. All of them have solutions; none of them has a solution that can be chosen from a photograph.

Single, double and two singles

A double opening can take one wide door or two single doors, and the choice is not purely aesthetic. One double door is a single mechanism to maintain and a cleaner opening to drive through. Two singles mean one door can stay working while the other is repaired, and each door is lighter, which is gentler on springs and motors.

Where there is a central pillar you have no choice. Where there is not, the width of the opening and the weight of the finished door usually decide it — beyond about 5 metres, a single door starts asking a lot of its springs and its top section.

Automation, safety and load shedding

A new door should be commissioned with the automation, not have a motor added later as an afterthought. The motor is sized against the finished weight of the door including any glazing or timber, and the travel limits and force settings are set with the door already balanced.

Safety infrared beams across the opening are standard on every installation we do. So is battery backup — in this part of Johannesburg a motor without it means a door you cannot open when the power is out, which is exactly when you want to get a vehicle off the street.

The auto-reverse test is done in front of you: an obstruction placed under the closing door, the door striking it, and the door reversing. If it does not reverse cleanly, it is not finished.

If there has never been a door in the opening, or the existing frame and tracks are being taken out entirely, it is an installation. If a serviceable frame, track and motor are staying and only the door itself is changing, it is a garage door replacement — and it costs meaningfully less.

The dividing line is usually the condition of the tracks and the age of the motor. Tracks that are straight, well-fixed and the right system for the new door can often be reused. A motor under about eight years old with a healthy board is normally worth keeping.

Where it is genuinely borderline you get both quotes. The one thing we will not do is reuse a component that will fail inside the warranty period just to make a quote look better.

A new door needs very little, but the little it needs matters in the first year while everything beds in.

• Have the balance and spring tension rechecked after the first few months of use
• Keep the bottom seal clear of grit, and hose the bottom section down occasionally on a steel door
• Lubricate rollers, hinges and springs annually — not the tracks, which should stay dry
• Keep the safety beam lenses clean and their brackets undisturbed
• Book an annual garage door service from year two onwards

The workmanship warranty runs 12 months. Servicing the door in year one costs almost nothing and is the simplest way to make sure any settling issue is found while it is still covered.