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Guide to Buying Side Hinged Garage Doors
Side Hinged garage doors are today still one of the most commonly searched for garage door types in the UK and the demand for this type of door has increased dramatically recently too, a lot to do with people not using their garages for vehicle storage.
The average single integral garage is being used as an extra room for the house to store almost anything and often the value of what is stored inside can be very high.
Many garages are also being used as a workshop, gym, office, playroom and numerous other uses where the garage door is required for security and occasional pedestrian access, or in the case of a mews style house, very common in central London, used as a main entrance for pedestrians for the property.
Side hinged garage doors, or ‘swing doors’ can only ever be as good as the total combination of the components, a good stable, strong pair of manufactured door panels, sturdy hinges, strong fixing sub frame and good quality locking and furniture. Obvious maybe, but true.
Why Hinged Doors?
Look at some of the side hinged garage doors available nowadays - they offer effortless operation, easy access and specified correctly also offer superb weather sealing and all this with little maintenance ever required as there are very few movings parts involved. You also do not have any internal tracking, springing or other mechanisms interfering with internal garage space.
A simple lever handle and cylinder lock will be smooth and easy to operate for anyone with back, neck, hand, or arm issues.
These are simple in all ways and properly specified and installed will offer so many years of service and trouble free daily operation.
Prefer to talk through your options? With 37 years experience we're always happy to guide and help you select the highest quality, compliant, reliable and secure garage door Call and speak to one of our expert team members today on
01933 229135
Prices?
There is a large price range from the budget price single skin, pressed steel models right through to hardwood bespoke models with high end luxury hardware and windows. The price range would be somewhere between £1,800 to over £10,000 installed and the majority of doors would probably be in the £2,500 - £3,500 range for most properties, being double skinned steel models with everything pre finished and left for instant use.
Don’t forget this is everything included, so many prices seen online are just for the door panels and by the time you have added the frame, hardware, locking and colour you have doubled or tripled the original price and you still have to install the doors.
What Material is Best?
Traditionally most people will think of side hinged garage doors being built in timber, and there are a huge selection of designs and timber species available as standard before even looking at bespoke designs. We can offer Cedarwood, Idigbo, Accoya, Iroko and Oak as standard. Cedarwood is the main timber generally used, being light in actual weight and also in colour. Cedar can be stained or painted in a microporous paint to almost any colour and is very stable in our wet and very unstable British climate.
We offer exclusive, bespoke hardwood options in almost any design achievable and in larger sizes than normal ranges to provide period or modern style, high quality doors for more exclusive properties or listed properties where detail is very important.
Steel is the most popular choice now for most homes, with single skin and double skin panel options offering high levels of weather protection and insulation for your garage. So many designs and pre finished factory colours and woodgrain laminate coatings offer excellent longevity and style.
NOTE:
Unsorted redwood and pine is a low priced unstable softwood timber used for side hinged doors with very high rates of failure after a short period as it is not stable with the variations in air moisture in the UK. The price differences when looking at these doors in isolation on various websites may seem enormous until you begin to add in hidden extras required such as the sub frame, hinges, hardware, locking and final finishing of the doors, most of which is standard with many of the hinged doors we supply. Check the differences carefully!!
If the requirement is based on low price alone then you will be better looking at some of the single skin, galvanised steel side hinged garage doors available as they are very stable and practical with some nice pressed panel designs and colours available.
Insulated Luxury Steel Options
Steel is not a material normally associated with swing type garage doors, but with modern manufacturing processes it is now a fully developed offering and one of the best options in reality.
The luxury feel of a solid, sturdy panel with smooth movement and a solid handle and locking.
With the great variety of double skinned steel doors with foam filled insulated core, giving a 40mm thick, double skin, insulated garage door panel, with great strength and therefore greater overall security when locked. These insulated doors offer components at much higher levels than most other doors as they have to deal with heavier panels - the hinges are stronger and the locking mechanisms used are usually far superior as the panel depth can take the mechanics of far more robust locking systems.
Threshold options are common to provide further weather protection but do rely on level floors.
Various front surface finishes are offered to provide a specific final appearance with either high quality powder coating for solid colours and laminated foils for woodgrain finishes.
We also offer a range of insulated personnel side doors in the same construction to complete the visual appearance, security and insulation of your garage. These are in a standard or purpose made range of sizes.
 Double Weather Strips |
 Friction Door Stays |
 Flush Bolt Security |
 Stainless Steel Handles |
 Security Lock Cylinder |
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Best Insulated Doors to view:
Teckentrup
Carteck Switch
Ryterna
Hormann
See the Doors in Action
Prefer to talk through your options? With 37 years experience we're always happy to guide and help you select the highest quality, compliant, reliable and secure garage door Call and speak to one of our expert team members today on
01933 229135
40mm Teckentrup thick panels have an insulating value that has been independently tested to 0.56 W/m²K. The lower the value the better the insulating properties.
It’s not a figure we tend to quote because we know a door is more than just a door panel in its final form. We quote the insulation value for a complete door (over frame size 10’4” wide x 7’6” high) including the panel joints and weather strips. CarTeck/Teckentrup side hinged doors have an insulation ‘U value’ of 2.20 W/m²K - you won’t find better performance on any comparable garage door.
Generally side hinged doors manufactured in steel, timber or GRP are produced up to around 8 feet (2438mm) wide and around 7’6” (2286mm) high. The doors can be made much larger, but with limitations on the design and timber used as the weight and strength becomes more important as well as the hinges and fixing sub frame used to support the doors when fitted.
Nearly all high quality hinged garage doors are made to order in the UK, although there are some standard sizes available for better pricing and manufactured to suit the most common standard size garage openings.
Be aware of the ordering sizes as some hinged doors are ordered by opening sizes inbetween the fixing sub frame and some will include the sub frame. Check before ordering to make sure you get what you require but we will always assist and of course specify the best sizes if we have survey details of your garage.
All side hinged garage doors require a fixing sub frame and these are normally either steel, aluminium or timber box sections in a ‘goal post’ arrangement. In most cases a timber sub frame is a nominal 70mm x 70mm but a 90mm depth is generally preferred to enable a decent ‘door stop’ to be included for weathersealing and the thicker sections also provide more strength. In steel construction the frame is usually between 50 and 70mm wide and varies in depth.
profiled aluminium sub frames are used on the insulated double skinned steel doors and these have built in weatherseals and lipped front edges for additional security.
The sub frame is required for fixing the hinges, weather seals, a proper stop for the door panels to hold against when closed, squaring up the structural opening and making the doors work in the best possible way with the best sealing possible.
Most people want timber door panels and the fixing sub frame to match each other in finish and colour, especially if the requirement was for a lighter stained finish. Mixing and matching timber species will not usually work very well.
The galvanised steel box section sub frames have great stability and strength to enable the use of uprated locking systems in the doors they are supplied with.
Steel and aluminium frames are generally powder coated in a colour finish to match or contrast the main door panels. Some steel frames can also be clad in a matching timber to the main door panels.
Security on a pair of side hinged doors can be very good indeed, but only if the main door panels are strong enough in their primary construction, including the surrounding fixing sub frame used.
The best hinged doors for proper security are the double skinned, insulated steel doors we supply from Teckentrup (Carteck), Ryterna and Hormann, with optional 3 and 4 point locking upgrades on already very good locking systems. The construction of these steel doors allows far more robust locking mechanisms to be built in and combined with double rebated edges and a super strong sub frame the overall result is a very secure set of doors indeed - very resistant to forced attack.
Timber doors can also be secure if uprated locking systems are specified and they are installed with a proper steel or hardwood timber sub frame. To have secure timber doors you generally need to be looking at joinery made hardwood timber doors using far thicker timber sections instead of just decorative cladding like many are.
If you want a security certified set of hinged doors we can provide double skinned steel doorsets from commercial specification models, with rebated edges, up to 9 point locking and a specification of resistance that would be happily used in any secure room environment. Designs can be compromised when high levels of security are required as the construction methods do not allow fancy pressings and designs as the steel used will usually be of a thicker guage than more normal doors. We can offer hinged doors with ‘Secured by design’ accreditation and also PAS24 rated. Under the LPS 1175 ratings we can also offer SR1, SR2 and SR3 if required.
Windows will always reduce security levels and enable potential intruders to see inside the garage through the windows for worthwhile pickings.
The security can be repeated in the pedestrian hinged doors of course as they use exactly the same principals as the double hinged doors in all ways.
Cheaper softwood or low quality single skin steel side hinged doors can never be very secure as the panels themselves can be forced and bent outwards relatively easily making any type of locking relatively useless to the determined intruder. Think carefully about the security as add on locks can be clumsy and difficult to install as an after thought
Conclusions
As with most things in life, you will only get what you pay for and this is really obvious if you take the time to investigate side hinged doors properly. A cheap pair of doors in low grade softwood timber will only last you a very short time before needing replacement.
A proper set of high quality timber, steel or insulated steel hinged doors will last for many, many years indeed, a proper investment for your home without ongoing hassle and maintenance being required. With so many garages now being used as another room to the home a pair of hinged doors make perfect sense on a single width opening. The insulation, security and acoustic performance is a great bonus for comfort and peace of mind on the inside.
