Around Traverse City
Historic in-town garages and busy suburban doors
Traverse City's older neighborhoods were laid out before the attached two-car garage was standard. In Slabtown, Old Town, the Boardman neighborhood and the Central Neighborhood you still find narrow detached garages set back on the lot or off an alley, many with doors that have been patched more than once. Those doors usually need new sections, straighter tracks, fresh rollers and an opener that suits a tight space.
Out past the city line, in Garfield Township and East Bay Township, the houses are newer and the garages are bigger, with attached two and three car garages on subdivision streets. These doors go up and down several times a day, so torsion springs, rollers and openers are the parts that wear first.
Then there is the weather. Traverse City often sees more than 100 inches of lake-effect snow in a season, and wind off West Grand Traverse Bay and East Bay pushes it against doors and into any gap at the bottom seal. Meltwater that gets under a worn seal can freeze the door to the floor, and forcing a frozen door with the opener puts real strain on the opener and the cables.
