Installing a wind-resistant garage door is one of the many things you can do to prevent wind damage. Such doors contain a layer of steel at the least, and sometimes more. The thickness of this layer decides how strong a wind the door can endure. If a garage door is impact-resistant, then its track will have a heavier gauge than those of standard garage doors.

Why Get a Wind-Resistant Garage Door

This depends on where your home is located. You can ask your building department for the building codes surrounding garage doors. There are many places in the country, which mandate minimum wind-resistance in the garage door. The International Building Code (IBC) obliges homebuilders to consider minimum wind loads in the area they are designing and building homes in. California, Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Nevada, and Utah place special requirements in this regard, owing to the fact that both the weather and terrain in these states invite frequent and sustained strong winds. Hence, the high sales of garage door replacement panels.

Florida has some of the most stringent legal requirements based on the wind pressure a door can stand up against, with these requirements varying across the state. The reason is simple: Florida has the most hurricane strikes in the country, which brings devastating winds, and oftentimes, flying debris.

Finding the Minimum Wind Speed

For Florida residents, there are ways to find out what minimum wind speed their garage door must be able to stand up against. It is also important to know if you are in a high-velocity hurricane zone, and if your garage door meets the large missile impact rating.

Determining your Exposure Zone

  • Exposure B areas fall among suburban and urban neighborhoods, forests, and woods. They also include areas places where potential obstructions are clustered close by each other.
  • Exposure C areas have open terrain and hardly any scattered obstructions, and comprise grasslands and flat open spaces.
  • Exposure D areas are as close as 600 feet from the ocean or another water body.

Calculating WindCode® Rating

The WindCode® rating lets you decide the amount of pressure you need to design the garage door to withstand. There is an online chart, which lets you input data that you have collected about the wind speed, home structure, and exposure area.

Note: In some places, design pressure is referred to as design load. They are almost the same thing, but be sure which one you are talking about when you mention one to your dealer or garage door repair service.