Garage door panel replacement

What people get wrong about this

How this varies across the metroplex

• Hail dents a single layer steel door because the skin is the only thing between the stone and open air behind it. A strike that lands between struts pushes the steel in and it stays in, since there is no core to spread the load. The dimples read most clearly on a flat or lightly embossed panel, where no stamped pattern breaks up the reflection.
• An insulated steel section is a sandwich: two skins bonded to a foam core, and the core backs the outer skin everywhere. That backing is why an impact that dimples a single skin door often leaves an insulated door unmarked. When an insulated section does take a dent, the bond behind it can break, and a section with a broken bond loses stiffness even where the skin looks flat.
• Storm claims on a garage door turn on documentation more than on the size of the dents. Photographs taken square to the panel rarely show shallow dimpling, so raking light from the side and a scale object in frame help. The manufacturer label inside the door gives the model and build date that an adjuster needs to assess one section rather than a full door.
• Whether a single section can be ordered starts with the manufacturer label, usually a sticker on the inside of the top or bottom section near an end stile. It carries the maker, the model line and a date, and without it the door has to be identified from panel profile and hardware alone. A door still in production is the straightforward case.
• Panel designs are discontinued on a normal product cycle, so a 16 foot door fitted ten or fifteen years ago may have no current equivalent section. Colors drift as well. A white from one production run is rarely the same white as a run years later, and on a wide door a new section sits directly beside old ones where the difference is easiest to see.
• A near match fails visibly where appearance is governed or the door faces the street directly. Sun fades a factory finish unevenly across a door, so even a correct color code on a new section reads brighter than the sections around it. Painting the whole door after the section goes in is one way to bring it back to a single tone.
• On a wood overlay or custom built door there is no catalog section to order. The damaged section is rebuilt: the base door is matched, then the overlay boards and the finish are reproduced to the existing pattern. Wood also moves with humidity, so a replacement section milled from new stock can sit slightly proud until it settles.
• A dent that stops at the skin is cosmetic. A dent that has bowed the strut across the top section or twisted a hinge leaf is structural, and a 16 foot door shows it in motion rather than at rest. Run the door by hand and watch the section edges. A panel that rubs the track or lifts unevenly has damage behind the steel.