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Q:How Secure is an Electric Garage Door?
It really depends on the type of door in question and some other factors with the electric operator used Specified correctly an electric garage door can be very secure indeed. Of course if the basic garage door panel is not very secure in the first place the motor drive may make very little difference if the break in involves breaking through the for panel itself. Electric or manually operated it doesn't matter if you can smash through the actual door! A correctly specified electric garage door operator fitted to a good strong garage door panel with good strength can be a very secure system as long as the motor drive unit and attachment to the door is strong and the operator has been tested and approved with the door in question. Many garage doors like the roller shutter doors have the motor built into the overall package rather than an add on later and this means if they have been designed well with mechanical additions to assist in holding the roller door curtain down they too will be very resistant to a burglary attempt. Lesser designed roller garage doors have the unfortunate down side of being able to be lifted up surprisingly easily when not designed with proper mechanics in the curtain to barrel connection or with no mechanics holding the curtain down on the floor. Adding a remote control operator to an existing door such as an up and over one piece door or a sectional type door means the motor drive has to attach somewhere onto the door and this can be a weak spot with You Tube videos freely showing how to unattached the carriage arm fro the door when a cheap operator is used combined with a door with weaknesses from a poor fitting sub frame. Take a descent garage door installation however and add a good quality electric operator combined with a de latch mechanism (only on up and over doors) and you will have a door with 3 point locking active via the door operator mechanism. Use an electric operator like the Hormann Supramatic or Promatic and you have the added benefit of patented steel latch to help further hold the door panel down and solid resisting upwards motion by force. The image below shows a cut out section revealing the hook mechanism with the towing arm for the garage door shown immediately below which goes to attach to the panel of either an up and over or sectional type door. This mechanism can also be used with hinged 'swing' type doors with the addition of a swing arm conversion kit. 
With the further advances now in encryption technology it is also possible to have "Bi Secur' 2 way technology in the radio transmission for electric operators and the added benefits of 128 bit encryption!! The Hormann Promatic and Supramatic when fitted to any of the LPU40 double skinned sectional doors now offers the 'Secured by Design' rating such is the security without even using a lock of any description in the set up. There are some specialised doors such as the Silvelox and Domina Overlap with security options offering additional motor driven bolts from the door panel and reinforcement in the door sections to prevent attacking with tools. The same applies to round the corner type doors where the mechanism and the door panel strength combined with a motor drive you cannot get near to from outside means a very solid door when closed with little chance of a casual and forced entry. For any advice on making an existing garage door electrically operated or the best combination of door and motor for security call us directly on (01933) 229135. We have been selling garage door operators since 1986!
