Seattle Garage Door Openers

While homeowners across the country love the convenience of an automatic garage door opener, in Seattle, it's closer to a necessity than a luxury. When you leave for work in the morning or when you need to run into the house to grab something, if you don't have a porch or covered walkway to your front door, entering and exiting your house can leave you cold, wet, fiddling constantly with an umbrella, and the end result can be a mixture of a bad mood and an unpresentable appearance.

Garage Door Openers in Seattle, WA: Beyond the Convenience
That said, even convenience must defer to safety. Older garage doors and door openers can have faulty tracks, outdated safety features, and may have simply fallen into disrepair. As much as you love the ability to open your garage door with the push of a button, you can't conscionably continue to use an older system that can crush kids or mutilate limbs. Though we mention these types of fear tactics generally reserved for the politicians, given that the only downside is forking over the money that will inevitably be needed at some point down the road to repair or replace your garage door opener, you have no real excuse to avoid taking prompt action.

Seattle Garage Door Opener Design
You'll have quite a few choices to make in the design of both the garage door hardware and the opener itself. Chain-driven openers tend to be the most cost-effective models, although they can be a little loud if you have intimate areas of your home abutting the garage. Screw and belt-driven openers are considerably quieter, and screw-driven models have the added benefit of having a greater load-bearing capacity for heavier garage doors.

Computerized access, remotes, and wireless keys (where you swipe the device in front of detection panel) provide the convenient access that Seattleites covet, where there is no need to get out of your car. Keypads can also be set up to the point where you can reach them from your car window, but these also tend to generate eyesores along your driveway or landscaping. Traditional remote-controlled access typically offers the greatest amount of convenience for the least amount of cost, but it's generally wise to splurge on a model that uses rolling frequencies so a would-be intruder can't simply get his own opener and gain entry to your home.

Cost of Seattle Garage Door Openers: Installation and Repair
Whether you're attempting to repair a garage door opener or the door itself, be wary about taking the project on yourself. Multiple Seattle homeowners who had their doors and openers repaired or replaced with costs ranging from $100 to $600, reported that they saved a bunch of time and headaches by hiring a professional. Taking an oil can to squeaking door hardware is one thing, but anything that involves replacement parts or disassembling your hardware is almost surely better left to the pros.

That said, the average cost to install a garage door opener in Seattle is about $500 with a range of $150 to $800, judging by recent projects. For a computerized garage door opener that you can use from the office to let in your housemaid or another visitor, you can probably end up spending a few thousand on a comprehensive system. Doors can vary quite a bit as well with an estimated range of $900 to $2,000.

Finding a Seattle Garage Door Contractor
Installing a new garage door or opener may seem like a fairly straightforward project that shouldn't require an extended search for a contractor. Unfortunately, this also leads to quite a few fly-by-night professionals who have repaired their own doors successfully and decide this experience is enough to go into business for themselves. To guard against these unreliable contractors, ServiceMagic puts each and every contractor in its database through a rigorous 10-step screening process so you can feel confident your contractor is offering quality work for a reasonable price.