What are you doing when it gets too cold outside? Besides paying a fortune on heating and electricity bills, you think to insulate every single part of your home, from the roof, to the attic, to the windows and doors insulation treatments, or even to getting an additional sweater for each member of your family.

If your house has a garage that communicates with the interior, then you’ve forgotten to insulate a very big warmth hog, the garage door. Garage doors, especially those old ones, that were meant to last for a lifetime or more, are made of inefficient materials, which let the heat go out and welcome the cold inside.

Garage Doors Insulation and the R Value

Since about 6 years ago, all garage doors came with a parameter called “R-Value”. This is an indicator of how well will your garage door resist strong winds and retain heat (or cooling) thanks to its internal insulation. The higher the R-Value, the more “insulated” and energy efficient the garage door. Values fall within the range of R3 – R18, typical doors having an R index between 4 and 7. This insulation is typically either a polyurethane material insulation, a polystyrene compound or some foam injected inside the structure of the garage door, which increases thermal efficiency. The insulation r value is not specific to garage doors. It is a general index for the energy efficiency of various insulation types.

How to get quality insulation for older garage doors

Is your garage door that old that it doesn’t have an R-value? If it is still good, you probably don’t want to change it, because of the costs and hassle involved. You can still benefit from high quality insulation by installing one of the “Garage Door Insulation Kits” that conform to just about any residential garage doors. These kits will permit you to refurbish your actual garage door into a money saving, protective shield from the nature’s fury. If you didn’t know by now, find out that the garage door is usually the largest surface area of your home that is not insulated.

A garage door insulation kit is usually made for an 8 foot single car garage door or a 16 foot double car garage door, which should accommodate most garages in use. The kits are usually made out of polystyrene which is a very good insulator for this purpose which will give you about the equivalent to a R-value of about 5. This is pretty decent, if we think that you’ll save a lot of money by lowering your bills without having to replace the whole garage door with a modern, insulated one.

If you are conscious about the way you spend your money, don’t throw them on the window (or shall I say on the garage door?). A simple, relatively cheap garage door insulation kit will provide you the protection that was missing from your house’s insulation. Sometimes it’s better to do a small garage door repair rather than replace the whole door. This will help you save money and manage your family budget in a better way.