28 Nov Are Commercial Garage Door Openers Different from Residential Garage Door Openers?
While residential garage doors for homes and commercial garage doors for a business look similar, particular differences between the doors make them more suitable for their designed purpose. When it comes to practical use, commercial garage doors get much heavier and more frequent use than residential doors. This makes their requirements for construction and hardware of a higher quality and strength than residential hardware.
So while the style and operation of residential and commercial garage doors can look the same, is there a difference between the door openers for these two door types?
Purpose Matched Features
As mentioned above, commercial garage doors need to stand up to heavier use, more frequent opening and closing, larger dimensions, and potentially more severe weather exposure. The materials and design of commercial garage doors are often much more limited because there are specific designs to meet the commercial standards for strength and durability. Commercial doors are usually made from galvanized steel or aluminum, although they often feature glass panels and other features.
On the other hand, residential doors are much more designer driven and can be made from a variety of different materials including wood, fiberglass, steel, aluminum, and composites. Residential doors are also smaller, as the openings for residential garages are usually smaller than the required opening for commercial stores or warehouses.
Because commercial doors are heavier, larger and take more wear, the hardware and machinery associated with commercial doors also need to be stronger.
Residential Vs. Commercial Garage Door Openers
Because of the differences between commercial and residential garage doors, the way they are opened needs to be different as well.
Hardware
The first difference lies in the hardware. Higher commercial door use means a more powerful and resilience opening mechanism needs to be used to stand up to wear. Hardware for commercial garage door openers needs to be stronger and more solid to stand up to the increased weight and use of a commercial garage door. For example, the tracks of residential doors use 2-inch hardware, whereas, for the tracks of commercial garage doors, either 2- or 3-inch hardware is used. The thickness of the steel used in the tracks is also more significant in the case of commercial doors.
The spring or counterbalance system will also vary depending on the size, weight, and openings-per-day of the door. Commercial garage doors will need heavier duty springs to account for the amount of opening and closing they need to do.
Lift Type
Most residential doors use a standard or low-headroom lift type, whereas commercial doors used standard, high lift, and full vertical lift types.
Electric Door Opener Power
Finally, the power of the electric motor differs between commercial and residential garage doors, to compensate for the greater weight and need for higher opening speed on commercial garage doors. Residential garage door openers tend to be either ½ or ¾ horsepower and exclusively powered by 115-volt power, whereas most commercial door openers are between ½ – 1 horsepower and are connected to single or three phase multi-volt systems.
These differences go to show that if you need a garage door for commercial purposes, a residential door may just not cut it. Talk to the experts at Frontier Pacific for professional advice on choosing the best commercial garage door for your business.