Installing garage door top/side weatherstrips

[dxg]

This question is about the outside weatherstrips. Like these:

M-D Building Products 2.5 in. x 7 ft. White Dual-Vinyl Top and Sides Garage Door Weatherstripping 87684 - The Home Depot

Use this MD Building Products White Dual-Vinyl Top and Side Weatherstripping Sweep to keep drafts, leaves, insects and dust out of your garage.

www.homedepot.com

Is there a generally accepted "best practice" way to position it with respect to the door? The MD instructions say "soft vinyl flap lightly touching the door". I don't know what "lightly" means, but some amount of "interference", i.e. deflection of the soft edge, is necessary to seal.

The top piece is especially critical, as too close to the door will result in rubbing the tops of each door section as it passes by and it may actually cause the door to stop due to the torque sensor in the opener.

Any experts here? How do you position the strips? Thanks

 

[loganb]

Mine that were installed this fall have the flap at a probably 70 degree angle to the jamb so the leaf is substantially overhanging the door panels.

 

[BillK]

Actually the way the hinges are designed as soon as the door starts to go up the top panel should move away from the seal and none of the others should touch it. My top seal is fairly snug to the door. Stick something up there with some tape temporarily and open the door. You will see what I mean. The only part of the door that ever touches the top seal should be the top inch or so.

If you look at how the tracks are sloped and the hinges are made, the entire door really does not touch the side seal either until it is almost all the way down.

 

[dxg]

@loganb: Angle is very hard to judge as the flap is flexible and when pressed against the door it is curved and wants to become tangent to the door and the jamb. Some installations I've seen are almost a perfect quarter circle. But 70 degrees sounds like a lot of deflection. I'm pretty sure I had less than that and it was too much. But it would depend on individual seal stiffness, etc.

@BillK: Yes, I understand and agree with everything you said. But the door doesn't just move a whole lot the moment it starts moving. The track is angled at about 1/8" per foot normally. So it's more subtle. You say your top seal is fairly snug to the door. That's what I thought I had and it's rubbing. How much interference is "fairly snug"? I.e. when the door is open and the top seal is free, how far does it extend past the plane where the door would be?

It's really only an issue for the top seal, the sides are not as critical as the door slides along the seal, not across it. I'm curious how the pros set it.

 

[Packard V8]

FWIW, from experience, I'd never install that crappage again. The base material expanded and contracted so much with change in temperature, it pulled the fasteners, created gaps, looks like ****. Then, the vinyl seal lasted only a few years on ours; started cracking and falling apart, looks like ****. YMMV, but who's found something which both seals and lasts?

jack vines

 

[dxg]

Jack, the old one on my garage lasted close to 25 years and no issues. It did not expand or contract. I replaced it only because I changed colors.
I can't tell you what brand mine was but obviously you just got hold of crappy product. Get some from a garage door installation and service company. They know what's good and bad.

 

[BillK]

How much interference is "fairly snug"? I.e. when the door is open and the top seal is free, how far does it extend past the plane where the door would be.

Here is a picture or the upper right hand corner of mine. It is pretty well tight against the door. It has been like that for about 10 years and still works perfectly. The door at my business has the same type of seal and I have only replaced it once in 20 years because it got hard and was not sealing as well.

 

[BillK]

Jack, the old one on my garage lasted close to 25 years and no issues. It did not expand or contract. I replaced it only because I changed colors.
I can't tell you what brand mine was but obviously you just got hold of crappy product. Get some from a garage door installation and service company. They know what's good and bad.

Same here. I actually got the one for the house from Home Depot. I got the one for the shop from a local garage door place because HD did not have Brown.

And for what its worth mine faces South so it gets the sun all day.

 

[dxg]

Here is a picture

Yes, that's what my old one looked like and worked fine. New one looks the same but is too tight. I need a more actionable method than "looks". I don't want to trial and error it too many times. It's a bit awkward at 18ft long. LOL

 

[loganb]

 

[dxg]

I am looking for any MEASURABLE method the pros use to set the strips correctly.
Eyeballing it has not worked for me.

 

[Toolfool]

35 years in residential construction, I have never seen anyone, pro installer or not, actually 'measure' this installation.

 

[Packard V8]

Glad you guys had better luck, but I stand by the statement the product I bought at Home Depot, which appears to be the same as that in the link, was miserable ****.

jack vines

 

[dxg]

35 years in residential construction, I have never seen anyone, pro installer or not, actually 'measure' this installation

Well, you need to either draw a pencil line or make a simple gauge block or something like that. The seal strip is much too floppy to stay straight by itself, especially an 18ft piece. That to me is a measurement of one kind or another.

Here is a pretty good install video where the guy says he drew his pencil line 2-1/4" from the edge of the jamb. Around the 5:00 minute mark.

Google Search

Unfortunately 2-1/4" doesn't mean anything because I don't know how wide his weatherstrip is or how far back the door is from the edge of the jamb.

 

[cwii]

I tried a different product called SNIRT stopper. https://www.snirtstopper.com I used the vinyl/ plastic previously and I could never get a good seal. It's a little spendy and I've only had it up about a month, but I like the way it seals. The large gaps I had on the sides and top are gone. My truck now stays clean, and most all of the west Texas dust is staying outside and it's much more comfortable inside.

 

[WildBill]

For whatever its worth when I installed garage doors 500 years ago we would open the door and put those on by lining up the edge of the seal flap part to the door opening. Or chalk a line however many inches made sense based on your seal size/shape. But we generally just made it so the bend of the flap part was straight along the edge of the door opening. Then use wood clamps whenever possible to hold it while we put in screws or nails, depending on the door framing. Personally I would swap the door rollers to those spring loaded ones first, they kick ****. Something like these - https://www.greenhingesystem.com A lot of time you don't have to replace all the rollers, sometimes just the middle and bottom ones if you adjust the top to seal properly.

 

[BillK]

Well, you need to either draw a pencil line or make a simple gauge block or something like that. The seal strip is much too floppy to stay straight by itself, especially an 18ft piece. That to me is a measurement of one kind or another.

I did both of the 16 ft doors at home and the 12 x 14 one at the shop and never marked anything. I closed the door, started on one end and mashed the seal against the door and nailed it in place. Did the top strip first and then the sides. Never had a reason to measure anything.

 

[BillK]

If you really feel the need for some type of measurement I suppose you could cut a very short piece off one of the strips, push it up against the door the way you want it and then make a mark to go by ?

 

[Sumboodie]

I didn't realize that style was still a thing. The brush style is normally what I see used.

 

[dxg]

If you really feel the need for some type of measurement I suppose you could cut a very short piece off one of the strips, push it up against the door the way you want it and then make a mark to go by ?

That's exactly what I did and apparently I'm a poor judge as to how hard to push it against the door. Ended up too close. I don't want to do trial and error until I get it right.

 

[racecougar]

That's exactly what I did and apparently I'm a poor judge as to how hard to push it against the door. Ended up too close. I don't want to do trial and error until I get it right.

Then measure your seal, subtract 1/4", and scribe your line.

35 years in residential construction, I have never seen anyone, pro installer or not, actually 'measure' this installation.

Ditto.

 

[DGersic]

That's exactly what I did and apparently I'm a poor judge as to how hard to push it against the door. Ended up too close. I don't want to do trial and error until I get it right.

So I guess I’m just lucky. I put them where they seemed right. As it turns out, the front edge is 3” from the door surface.



As noted above, nothing rubs because the top edge of the door is pulled back away from the sealer strip, and the rest of the door is pulled back by the arrangement of tracks and rollers.

 

[dxg]

the front edge is 3” from the door surface.

Thank you. And what is the free width of the strip when it's not touching anything?
My strip is 3" wide, so if I set it like that it would barely touch the door

 

[jstroede]

You are making this way harder than it needs to be. I have never seen any "professional" installer measure anything when installing this. Due to every particular size, jamb condition, track position, etc., it should be adjusted to fit about how loganb showed in his picture. The last picture looks too far from the door, but it's hard to tell in the picture. If you find it is slightly too tight or loose once it is up, you can usually make minor adjustments with the track. It may not be perfectly straight if you are fitting it to the door, and that's ok.

John

 

[CraigStu]

Mine look like DGersics, maybe slightly tighter. One thing to note is that, the looser the fit, the more the wind moves the door. I have never had a problem w/ too much rubbing. Even though the door surface is a smooth pebble finish you have 3-4" of flat surface before you get into any of the decorative shaping. Also the tighter the fit, the closer to parallel to the door surface the edge of the seal is so it can actually slide more easily. I had one old house w/ probably 20yr old seals. They were getting hard. A spray of clear silicone fixed them right up. One more thing, if by chance you do feel the door is binding due to seal rubbing, adjust the up force on the door opener.

 

[dxg]

After further review...
It appears the placement of the weatherstrip is particularly citical because the original installation of the high lift track is not ideal. The horizontal tracks have 15" radius ends and a 6in piece of straight track between between that and the vertical track.
But that piece doesn't angle away sharply from the vertical track, in fact it changes angle very little at that point. So the door panels pull away from the top weatherstrip by very little.
I don't want to redo the tracks because they work very well, so looks like I have to make the weatherstrip pretty loose.

 

[jstroede]

if your top seal is an issue, you can install a seal from the top of the top section to the header. They are used all the time in commercial applications.

 

[dxg]

You mean mount a brush seal on the top edge of the top section?

 

[jstroede]

There are various types out there, depending on your style of door, but here is a quick example.