Expert Garage Door Repair,
Service, & Installation in
Arcata, CA

Start with the 1980s: 1,329 Arcata homes were finished in that decade, and a door hung with one of them has been running on the same springs, cables and hinges for about forty years. Then look one row up the census table. The 1970s: 1,329 as well, to the unit. The 1950s sit just behind at 1,299. The middle of the stock dates to 1976, 56.0% of it went up before 1980 and 16.2% after 2000, and the practical meaning of a profile that flat is that a build year tells us how long the hardware has been in service and nothing whatever about what is bolted to the header. We bring a tape and read the door that is actually there.

What all of them share is the rain. The Eureka WFO station on Woodley Island, 9.3 km out, averages just over 40 inches a year, not one day at or above 90F, and 7.7 freezing nights. So when water turns up on a garage floor here, the useful thing to know first is what a sectional door is: DASMA says plainly that these doors are “not leak proof or watertight”, and that water clinging to the face and dripping down as you raise it “can and should be expected as a normal operating condition”. The path that is worth a service call is the quieter one — water held in the section interfaces of a closed door, which “often runs or wicks its way to the ends of the door, bypassing the perimeter door seal” and putting a substantial amount of water inside. That is answered at the fittings: seals between sections, an enhanced perimeter seal, adjustable jamb brackets, and the top bracket and trolley arm set so the door pulls up square and lands square against the stops.