These days, a majority of homes have automated garage doors. If yours is a manual, you could rig it with a new system to fully automate its motion. There are many benefits to doing this, such as convenience and peace of mind.

Before automating a garage door, there are of course a few things to consider. The main one is the condition of your door. A warped or dented door would likely not be suited to conversion and should consider replacing it.

Canopy Garage Doors

This is the type of garage door, which sticks out from the entrance when fully open. This type is hard to fully convert to automatic, and it is seen that older models do not usually integrate well with their new automated state. If you are ready to dish out extra and acquire and use a bow arm kit, this could work, but be warned that the work ahead of you could be just as hard as a full-size garage door installation.

Tracked Garage Doors

These open the same way as canopy doors, but then slide back inside when fully open. That in itself makes them perfect for conversion to automatic. Such garage doors often have motors installed to automate them, and work wonderfully well afterward. This may be one of the reasons, why so many people prefer this type of door when buying; not to mention the fact that they bring down the need for garage door repairs.

Sectional Garage Doors

Sectional doors are highly capable when automated. The procedure calls for adding a motor similar to the ones used in automatic tracked doors. Roller garage doors get motorized a lot.

New Garage Doors Available as Automatic

Most roller garage doors available these days are automatic as a standard. The motor itself is placed in the door roll, which in turn is mounted above, outside, or within the door’s opening. It does not take up too much space on the ceiling, the way other garage door motors do. With sectional doors, you have both motorized and manual options to choose from, as well as the possibility to switch later from the latter to the former. With tracked doors, you get the manual option as standard, which you could convert to automatic by simply adding a door motor.