Your garage can be a peaceful space where you can work on your car or any projects. In other cases, it can be an entertainment area where you hope to relax and unwind. The thing is, if you live in a busy street or neighborhood, annoying noises can get inside the garage, disturbing your peace. Also, if you use the garage as a mini-workshop and operate different garage equipment and power tools, the noise can disturb the neighbors.
Garage doors are notorious for allowing unwanted noise in and out of the room, but that’s not all. Those gaps on the garage door are also significant culprits that allow rain, wind, water, and pests into the garage.
Thankfully, you can avoid these problems by sealing the garage door. It needs proper sealing on the top, bottom, and sides to provide adequate protection from all elements.
Check out the different approaches on how to seal a garage door from inside.
Do You Need to Seal Your Garage Door? Why?
A properly sealed and insulated garage door can keep weather, unwanted noise, and pests out. Sealing those tiny gaps will protect the garage interior from the cold wind, water, rain, and even snow. It can help retain cool air or heat in the interior space to make the room more comfortable.
Whether you are using a heater or a garage air conditioner, proper insulation in your garage door ensures a regulated temperature profile. Because there’s no energy leakage, you can minimize your utility costs significantly.
Adding adequate insulation to the garage doors will also assist in soundproofing the garage interior, whether that’s to protect you from a noisy neighborhood or to protect them from your noisy air compressor.
But the biggest question is, how do you know if your garage door needs sealing?
Simple Tip: During a sunny day, close your garage door and shut off all the lights inside. If you see daylight coming through the gaps around your garage door (top, floor, and sides), you need to seal those gaps.
How to Seal the Garage Door from Inside: Step by Step
It’s essential to seal your garage door properly to protect the inside from any calamity, and it’s simple to do so. It’s a DIY project that you can finish in a couple of hours, probably less.
1. Measure the length for sealing your garage (top, sides, and bottom).
2. Clean the surface from dust and dirt using a brush.
3. Cut all necessary sealing items you need to install based on your measurements.
4. Make sure to close the door and install the garage door seal, covering the top, sides, and bottom of the garage door. Depending on what kind you choose, you either have to use glue or other adhesive or screw the sealing strip.
The only thing you have to figure out is what materials to use to seal your garage door, and there are a few available. You can choose one or combine two methods for maximum effectiveness.
How to Seal the Bottom of a Garage Door
The first place you need to consider sealing is the bottom of the garage door. You can use some excellent methods to adequately seal the gap between the garage door bottom and the floor.
1. Bottom Seal
Bottom seals are the easiest to install because they already come with clips you can attach right to the garage door, and you’re good to go. No gluing, nailing, or screwing is necessary. The U-shaped rubber seal will compress every time you close the door.
What Is It Used for?
Bottom seals are ideal for keeping out dirt, dust, and small rodents from entering your garage through the bottom of the door.
2. Bottom Brush Seal
Brush seals conform to any surface and provide a barrier against pests, dirt, and other outside elements. The key to providing an adequate door seal using a brush strip is to get one at the correct height to cover the gap. But here’s the catch – installing a brush seal strip on the garage door includes drilling and screwing it to the door.
When Is It Used for?
The bottom brush seal is ideal if there’s a noticeable sized gap between the floor and the bottom of the garage door. For instance, when the bottom of the door is damaged or has rotted away, warped, or cracked, using a brush strip is your best solution.
3. Threshold Seal/Floor Seal
This type is similar to the bottom seal, but instead of sticking it to the bottom of the garage door panel, you install it right into the floor. It has a raised lip, which should fit snugly to the bottom of the door when closed.
It’s the most effective and durable bottom seal and usually comes with its own adhesive, although you can screw it to the floor for extra hold.
What Is It Used for?
This type of floor seal helps prevent water from getting in or out of the garage, especially during rain and snow. A threshold seal is recommended if you have a sloping driveway to the garage. It can also block dust, pests, and rodents from getting into the garage.
How to Seal Garage Door Sides
There are a couple of weatherstripping materials you can choose from: felt, foam, and rubber or silicone.
Felt tapes could be either plain or metal reinforced, and while it’s relatively inexpensive, this type of weatherstripping material is only good for a year or two.
Foam tapes come in varying thicknesses and widths, which is a great option for irregular-sized gaps.
Lastly, rubber, silicone, or vinyl weatherstripping tape is generally more durable but less pliable and harder to install than foam tapes.
What Is It Used for?
Most often, you discover gaps forming at the side of your garage door after some time due to regular wear and tear, structural shifting, and weather damages over time. The best way to seal these gaps is by using weather stripping tape.
How to Seal the Top of Your Garage Door
It’s not enough that you seal the sides and the bottom of the garage door. You might not notice, but if there’s an unmistakable gap on top of the garage door, you need to seal it too.
There’s a garage door seal specifically made to seal the top of the garage door. It’s made of rubber and effectively closes any gap between the garage door and the ceiling. With this top seal installed, it will completely shut any existing gap when you close the garage door.
What Is It Used for?
Garage door top seal is suitable if you want to keep the heat from leaving the garage space, especially during the cold season. Hot air tends to rise when the weather is cold, and a top seal will prevent heat from leaking out.
How to Seal Your Garage Door with an Uneven Floor?
An uneven floor is another reason why water, dirt, noise, and pests can enter the garage. To stop it from happening, you need to seal the garage door shut. But it’s more challenging to deal with an uneven floor, and for that, you need to seal your garage door two ways: bottom seal and threshold seal.
- Choose an extra-wide bottom seal for an uneven floor. Around two to three inches thick weatherstripping should be adequate to close all small gaps under the garage door.
- The threshold seal will create around a ½ inch barrier to protect your floor from water and debris entering the garage.
This combination will completely seal your garage door even if you have an uneven floor.
Will Insulating the Garage Door Help?
If you want the garage door to be more energy-efficient, insulation will help a great deal. You can always purchase a new door that’s already insulated, but if you don’t want to replace what you already have, insulating a garage door is fairly simple and affordable.
Insulating the garage door minimizes energy loss. It means your garage will help keep your garage warm during winter and cool during summer. Insulation on the door also helps soundproof your garage from unwanted street noise.
How to Insulate a Garage Door?
There are different materials you can use to insulate your garage door.
- Fiberglass Batt – often backed by paper or foil that helps shield your garage from air and water vapor or moisture.
- Foam Board – grid panels that provide high insulation to the garage door for a thin layer.
- Reflective Insulation – reflects radiant heat, making it excellent insulation during the summer season or for garages in hot climates.
Final Thoughts
A well-sealed garage door will keep dust, dirt, rain, water, snow, noise, and pests away from the garage. If you use the garage as a workshop, sealing the garage door will also add comfort to the room. Plus, it can help reduce energy costs if you are running a garage heater or air conditioning.
Are you ready to start this project? If your garage door needs an improvement, the above methods should help you seal the garage door from the inside.
