Rotted jambs and header trim around a Dunwoody garage door
On the ranches and split-levels Dunwoody built between about 1965 and 1985, the garage opening is framed and trimmed in wood, and a sectional door hangs on that framing. Its vertical tracks are lag-bolted to the jambs on either side. On a torsion door the spring assembly is fastened to the header or to a wood spring pad above the opening. Thirty-odd Georgia summers of humidity and runoff soften that wood, and the bolts in it are where the trouble shows first.
Can a garage door be fixed when the wood around it has rotted?
Yes. The door and its frame are separate jobs, and a rotted jamb rarely means the door is finished. What matters is what the soft wood is holding. If a track bracket or the springs’ anchor plate is fastened into it, the frame is rebuilt and the door rehung on new wood. On a house this age that is a regular part of garage door repair in Dunwoody.
Rot that holds no hardware, a soft corner of the outside trim or a casing board with paint flaking off it, is carpentry that can wait for a dry week. Rot behind a bolt cannot wait, since that bolt carries part of the door’s weight or the full pull of the springs.
Where does rot start around a garage door in Dunwoody?
At the bottom of each jamb, nearly always. The foot of the jamb sits a few inches above the slab, where rain splashes back off the driveway and water stands after a storm, and the end grain at the bottom of a board soaks it up. On a garage at the foot of a slope, the runoff the driveway sends down to the door sits against those jamb feet longer than anywhere else.
The stop molding is next. It is the narrow strip on the face of each jamb that the side weatherstrip presses against, and it stays damp behind the rubber long after the rain quits. Higher up, a clogged gutter over the garage spills down the face of the frame in a summer thunderstorm, and the header trim goes soft at its top corners.
Check the inside of the frame too. Plenty of these jambs were painted on the street side and left bare inside the garage, and bare wood takes in Dunwoody’s humidity all summer.
Is it rot or termites?
Soft, wet wood that crumbles or splits along the grain is rot. Wood that looks sound but sounds hollow when tapped, with tunnels of dried mud running up from the slab into the jamb, points at subterranean termites, which are common in Georgia. A termite find goes to a pest company before any wood is replaced. New wood set against an active colony gets eaten too.
A screwdriver pushed into the soft spot usually settles it. Rot gives like a wet sponge. Termite-eaten wood breaks through a thin outer skin into hollow galleries lined with soil.
What does a garage door do when the wood under its bolts gives way?
It starts to move where it should not. Lags in a soft jamb loosen a little with every cycle, the track shifts with them, and the door begins to rub or sit crooked in the opening. The signs show up at the fasteners well before anything breaks:
- A track bracket whose lag bolt turns without tightening, or has backed out far enough to show its threads.
- A gap opening between the vertical track and the jamb near the floor, where the wood is worst.
- Rubbing or binding on one side of the door only, as one track drifts and the other stays put.
- A spring plate tilted on the header, or a spring bar that is no longer level across the top of the door.
- Daylight down the side of a closed door, where the stop molding has pulled away from the jamb.
Of these, the spring plate is the one that means the door is not run again until a pro has looked at it. The springs are wound against that plate, so a plate pulling out of soft wood leaves the full tension of the door on a few loosening lags. Leave the door where it is and unplug the opener. Loose track brackets are less urgent, though every trip up and down works them looser.
What order does a rotted garage door frame get fixed in?
The door pro starts it and finishes it. The spring tension comes off first and the track is supported, so the rotted wood can come out without the door dropping or racking. Then the soft jamb sections, the spring pad or the blocking behind the header are cut out and replaced, and the door goes back up into sound wood. At the bottom of the jambs, where the water sits, rot-resistant trim board is a common choice for the new pieces.
The track brackets go into the new wood with new lags, the stops go back on with fresh weatherstrip, and the door is balanced before the opener’s force setting is checked. A new bottom seal and side stops run $90 to $180, and the rest of the list is on the page of what seals, springs and other repairs cost here.
Some garage door pros replace jamb sections and stops themselves. A header with structural rot, or rot that has reached the wall framing beside the opening, is framing work for a carpenter, and the door pro comes back to rehang once the carpenter is done.
Does rotted framing mean the garage door has to be replaced?
No. A sound door goes back up on sound wood, and the door taken down for the jamb work is usually the one rehung afterward. The exception is a wood door whose own bottom section rotted along with the jambs, since the same water reached both. Whether that door is worth saving is covered in repair or replace a Dunwoody garage door.
A steel door hung in a rotted frame often looks worse than it is. Its tracks have shifted, so it rubs and sits crooked and seems worn out, and once it is rehung in new wood it usually runs the way it did before the jambs went soft.
When it is time to call: garage door repair in Dunwoody, from the springs down to the wood they are bolted to.