At Crawford Door Sales, our primary goal is to provide you and your home or commercial building with high-quality, durable garage door solutions that keep you protected. Not only will we help secure various belongings and vehicles, we’ll offer you strong, well-insulated products that help out your heating and cooling bills as well.
One measure that’s used in the industry to attempt to judge the insulation and energy efficiency of a garage door is known as R-value. What is this measure, and should it be the only number you pay attention to when choosing a new garage door? Let’s take a look at all the pertinent details here.
Entryways and R-Value
R-value isn’t just a term exclusive to garage doors; rather, it can be used on all entryways into a home or building. It refers to the general thermal efficiency of a given entryway, generally provided by the manufacturer of the item. However, it’s not so simple as a single number in all cases.
R-Value Meaning
In the simplest terms, R-value is defined as “how well the door or structure insulates its enclosure” – that is, how well it keeps air from flowing in and out. It’s based on multiple factors, including the thickness of the door’s insulation, the chemical properties of the materials used in a door, and several others. So a door made of glass might have a very different R-value than a similar door type made of steel, and so on and so forth.
However, it’s important to remember that R-value is not a singular predictor of how efficient your door will be. Different door types will be rated differently, and there’s some debate in the industry about what the values actually represent.
Ask Questions
Perhaps the single most confusing area when it comes to R-values is the fact that different manufacturers deal with them in various ways. Most tend to just list the R-value as a broad expression of the overall thermal efficiency of the door, but others will select a smaller section of the door and use this to define the R-value. This can be a bit of a disingenuous process at times – if you calculate R-value based only on the panel right in the center of the door with the best insulation, it will show a higher number than those that use an average of the entire door.
For this reason, always ask detailed questions of us or any garage door manufacturer when considering new products. Ask about whether R-value was determined using just part of the door or the entire thing, plus inquire about which specific factors were used just to be safe.
For more on garage door R-values, or to learn about any of our residential or commercial garage door products, speak to the staff at Crawford Door Sales today.
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