An increasing proportion of new garage door sales are for remote-controlled and motorized operating systems; however, it is not always necessary to purchase a new garage door to obtain these benefits.

Most overhead garage doors can be converted to a power door with a motor, remote control unit, and a simple conversion kit. Many kits can be installed by the typical DIY enthusiast.

The first thing that needs to be established is the type of overhead door that will be installed.

These doors come in two forms, known as retractable and canopy doors, and the type of motorization kit required will depend on which of these two options is installed.

Knowing what type of overhead door requires automation is important because the two options have different support frames and different tilt mechanisms.

  • HAS retractable The overhead garage door has a complete frame with vertical and horizontal guides and the door is supported on all four corners during the entire opening and closing movement. This leads to a very smooth and resistance-free operation and this in turn means that these retractable doors only require a motor and a belt or chain mechanism to open and close them. The complete motorized retractable system can be installed in a couple of hours with a reasonable tool kit, and manual adjustments are kept to a minimum thanks to intelligent electronics that recognize and adapt to the opening characteristics of the doors. This means that setup and adjustments are negligible with this type of door.
  • HAS pavilion The garage door uses a much simpler (and cheaper) support frame than a retractable door and does not have four constant transition points of contact like a retractable door. This results in canopy doors having less sophisticated movement than retractable doors and this, in turn, means that they require a much more complex and expensive conversion kit. Converting a manual marquee door to power operation typically requires a contract adjustment by a dealer. This is because the conversion kit not only converts the manual door to an automatic one, but also converts the transition and movement of the door to something that simulates that of a retractable door. This requires significant alterations to the support framework and working mechanism and makes the project a much more complex and complicated challenge. In fact, it’s usually worth doing a price comparison between buying a new automatic retractable garage door and converting an existing canopy door to an electric one.