When I bought my first home, I knew I was going to have to start maintaining different parts of the home to keep everything functioning properly. However, what I did not realize was that the garage door was one of these things. I decided to create this website because I had no idea how much maintenance a garage door needed and what types of maintenance. If you aren't cleaning your garage door tracks, checking for loose screws or oiling the tracks on a bi-monthly basis, I hope my website teaches you how to do this maintenance and the importance of performing it.
Garages are hardly the most obvious place to focus your efforts on being eco-friendly, but there are a surprising number of new developments in this field if having a greener house is your aim. Here are some examples of ways to make your garage friendlier for the environment.
Concrete Garage Floors
For one thing, concrete is known for being effective at keeping out all moisture, as well as being difficult to damage. This will reduce the amount of material and energy you have to waste repairing it. Additionally, the main ingredient in concrete is limestone, which is one of the most abundant minerals found on Earth.
Many garages floors are made of cement, which requires a process responsible for 5% of all carbon dioxide emissions from people on the planet. On the other hand, concrete can be made from slag cement, silica fume, and other materials that are actually the waste products from other plants.
This means that by choosing to use concrete instead, you'll be reducing the waste effect of other plants in addition to supporting a cleaner process yourself. It's hard to get better than that in terms of being eco-friendly in your approach.
Eco-Friendly Composite Garage Doors
One option for getting a more eco-friendly garage door is to purchase a door that's made of recycled, composite materials. This way, you aren't wasting resources on your garage door because all of the materials would have been recycled from other sources.
Another advantage of composite doors such as those made from recycled stainless steel and copper is that they tend to be more resistant to getting cracks in them. Additionally, you can get doors made of recycled wood fibers as well. Some companies have doors made largely of highly recyclable wood such as Douglas Fir in addition to resin and wax for preservation.
Many doors made of these materials have been known to resist weather and general decay better than purely wooden doors. (For more information, contact Raynor Door Company.)
Sustainable Energy Garage Door Openers
It also helps to use garage door openers that have Energy Star ratings. If you can power these door openers from sustainable energy sources, this would help increase the overall sustainability of your home as well.
For example, you could mount solar panels on your roof and use the energy collected from them in order to power your garage door opener. This way you wouldn't have to rely on your area's power plant which could use power generation methods harmful to the environment.
Share9 March 2015
