How Compact Sectional Doors overcome design restrictions by traditional overhead sectional doors

You have been putting up with overhead space constraints and overhead beams in your garage for too long. So long, in fact, that you may not even realize how cumbersome and unappealing they are!

Fortunately, there is an alternative: the compact sectional door by Remax.

Older Style Overhead Sectional Doors vs Compact Sectional Door

Older style overhead sectional doors shown the image below:

The Compact Sectional Door shown below:

Once our customers know that there is an alternative to traditional overhead sectional doors, they never go back to the traditional style. The door leaves of the Compact Sectional Door are unique in their design and fold up, concertina style, into a tidy and small 730mm wide unit overhead.

This small unit can also be recessed into ceiling itself creating the look of just a wall of glass windows / leaving your ceiling area free of overhead beams and overhead tracks or support bracing.

The sectional garage door leaves can easily be hidden above the ceiling to create a unique, clean wall of retractable glass (or thermal RAL block panels to match the colour of the building). See below car showroom sectional door in during both their opened state (below left) and whilst closed (below right).

What are the design differences:

1) Reduce maintenance on door extensions and springs

With all the important gear and equipment being kept in garages nowadays, if your garage door does end up getting jammed or stuck, you would certainly need to arrange an urgent call-out or carry out some urgent repairs in order to securely close your garage before you leave home. Not ideal! 

The traditional sectional door moves on rails into the building across the ceiling or directly above the access. To do this they use balance springs, which are highly-tensioned steel springs that need regular maintenance to maintain their tension. These springs also need regular replacement, which takes up a lot of time and is expensive.

You can avoid a jammed or stuck door and an expensive callout by knowing your door and its moving parts. There are two main styles of one-piece springs. The first is the standard spring, which is used by a variety of door manufacturers. If the top of your door has rollers that move along a metal track that extends horizontally toward the back of your garage, you have standard one-piece springs.

To ensure the door continues to work smoothly and reliably, the complex arrangement of rails that the door moves on require careful maintenance of the track rollers and hinges. At the same time the steel rail structure needs to be regularly checked for safety.

One system that has been much used is the steel roller shutter, which needs minimal maintenance but also has many disadvantages, including poor insulation. Today, the roller shutter is being used less and is frequently being replaced with an insulated sectional door with more options.

The compact folding door is often used as a replacement for these sectional doors. This folding door is self-supporting with its side rails, so nothing more is needed. The compact door folds up above the door opening and therefore does not require a steel structure on the ceiling or above the access. No balance springs are needed, the door blade is moved up by an electric motor and when closing gravity plays its part.

The advantage of this system is lower maintenance costs because there is simply less to maintain. The quiet and gradual movement uses little energy, which means a longer lifespan and lower maintenance costs.

2) Save more energy and reduce temperature fluctuations

If you enjoy using your garage space for more than one purpose, such as games area / man-shed / home bar / entertainment area / kids play area / teenage retreat (or should it be a parent retreat from teenagers?? :) - it can be an uncomfortable space to be in during the heat of summer or in the height of winter. Standard aluminium roller shutters / overhead doors certainly can lack insulation and a full seal against outdoor elements. 

The Compact Sectional Door is designed with insulated sandwich panels 40mm thick, with U-value for the panels of 0.76W/m². The total U-value number of the complete door will be affected by the building and the environment. For example when the floor is not 100% levelled you could have a very small gap between rubber of the bottom panel and a serious loss of energy. Also we sometimes use insulation materials between the rails and the steel construction to create a “cold bridge”, which also affect the result.

Next to that, the insulation value will be affected when using full vision panels, since the U-value of the compact sectional door double acrylate window is ± 2.8W/m²K and single hard glass would be worse.

3) Garage door sizes

In most cases a double car garage door is 16x7 or 16x8 and single car openings are usually 9x7 or 9x8. Yet the compact sectional door is manufactured bespoke to your requirements - and has been manufactured for a vast range of applications such as airline hangars, food processing facilities, apartment blocks, arenas and more.

4) Put your headroom to better use

How much headroom is traditionally required to install a garage door?

Headroom varies with the type of door; but most doors can typically be installed with 12” to 15” of headroom plus an extra 2” for an electric opener. But the problem with traditional overhead garage doors is that it is not just the headroom which needs to be taken into account but also the overhead beams which consume ceiling space in order for the door to roll up and over into the garage space while the door is open.

Traditional overhead door (left) vs compact sectional door (right)

 The compact sectional door on the other hand, can be recessed into the ceiling space either totally out of view into the roof space or by allowing for a recessed area into the ceiling, the size of the stacked panels. This creates a clean flow along the ceiling allowing for other, more critical, available space for storage / lighting / skylights. 

The compact sectional door has also been installed in various residential applications such as home-gym, personal car showroom for care collectors or in a bespoke retail application where the door becomes a retractable 'wall' of glass.

Compact sectional doors offer a range of design solutions to fit with the design of your home, from totally clear double glazed glass panels / or opaque panels to a thermal RAL panel - or a mixture of both coloured thermals and also windows together in one design. The options are endless.

Get more information about compact sectional doors

If you'd like to request a quote or find out more about compact sectional doors, contact the expert Remax team online or call 1800 010 221.