The Benefits of Side Hinged Doors
With all the advances in various garage door mechanisms and technology why do the side hinged doors remain so popular?
We have seen the demand for hinged garage doors rise year on year and yet the basic mechanism remains the same - a pair of side hinged panels in a sub frame. So why are they so popular? Side hinged doors are traditional whilst offering great convenience in their operation, a simple handle or lock to open the leading pass door and no lifting involved at all. When accessing your garage on foot, as so many people do, this type of door is ideal as you only open one half of the door, and then only as much as is necessary to enter or leave. Many designs and styles can also have a 2/3rd and 1/3rd split also to offer a defined pedestrian access door leaf where the larger leaf is only ever opened when full access is required.
Most people tend to think of side hinged doors manufactured in timber, and yes this is still the most popular in demand but only because of the lack of awareness of the more practical and diverse range of GRP and steel hinged doors available now. So, although the basic mechanism stays the same, the panels and the options for locking are taking advantage of 21st century materials and technology. Although various modern-day solutions allow timber doors to be used practically now, one of the issues that used to be associated with timber is that, in lower specifications of the actual timber species used, comes a great risk of warping and rotting and this may be true with low priced, basic unsorted redwood timber.
The most logical timber for use in a garage door is cedarwood; it is light in weight and colour and is very resilient to the diverse British weather. You can take the timber to almost any shade of colour and using the correct wood treatment the doors will last for many, many years with little further treatment.
Idigbo is another popular timber now used, offering the most similar graining and general feel of oak, but without the very unstable properties of oak in a temperate and generally damp climate. Idigbo is also lighter in weight although still quite heavy and certainly durable against general daily use. These higher specification doors combined with a properly specified sub fixing frame can give your garage great levels of insulation and excellent protection from the weather. Installation using high quality furniture and locking will also make the whole door an excellent investment. Of course the greatest benefit of timber in garage door panels is the diversity of design, where almost anything is possible including almost any shape of glazing within the design. You may see many standard and traditional designs, but any design is possible if specific detail is important to you. Most side hinged garage doors are also made to measure as a matter of course for the best fit and visual appearance. See the Woodrite doors for the best examples of timber side hinged doors in the UK.
Steel is not generally thought of for domestic hinged garage doors, but Garador and others do manufacture some great single skin steel doors using galvanised steel. 
The steel used is always pre-finished in a powdercoat colour, and nearly always manufactured with a factory pre-fitted steel fixing sub frame to make installation on site very easy indeed. All hinges, locks, stays and seals are already fitted.
Insulated side hinged doors are the biggest newcomer to the scene, offering all the benefits of high levels of sound and heat insulation within an easy-to-use hinged door system. The benefits of a double skinned insulated door panel also means high levels of security, as the door panels are 40mm thick, so can take some fairly heavy duty lock systems using stainless steel components, as well as multi-point locking points.
Once again, using the pre-fitted aluminium box section sub frame means built in weatherseals and double rebated edges for maximum resistance to forced entry attempts. See the Carteck, Ryterna and Hormann ranges to if you are interested in this style of door.
Other possibilities are also available with hinged doors, such as using three or more panels to produce a bi-folding system for wider openings. It is also possible to specify doors from commercial ranges where colours and contemporary panel designs can suit the garage, especially on very wide openings. All these hinged doors can of course be electrically operated using two or three basic methods: A simple pull and push using a normal boom type operator with an adaptor, hydraulic or electromechanical rams as used for gates or systems derived from commercial door openers.
All these can be seen on our 'guide to automating side hinged doors' page. Whatever your requirements may be for side hinged garage doors, take a good look at all the options before jumping in with a decision based purely on price alone. Some low-priced doors are made only to a price and will need replacing again after a relatively short life.
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