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Why A Strong Garage Door Matters

A compromised garage door can trigger significant damage to your home, affecting the roof and walls by allowing wind to exert forces they aren’t built to withstand. Learn how to prevent your door from becoming a “damage amplifier” and avoid costly repairs and extended displacement from your home. 

Why It Matters

As the largest opening in a home, a garage door is one of its most vulnerable areas. High winds can push a garage door inward, allowing pressure to build inside your home, pushing up on the roof and out on the surrounding walls—often resulting in more significant structural damage to your home. Keeping the wind out during hurricanes, tornadoes, and thunderstorm wind events is key to preventing a cascade of damage. 

Research Insights

Lab Testing & Field Observations 

IBHS has conducted full-scale, residential garage door research in its test chamber, simulating severe storm and hurricane conditions with wind speeds reaching well above 100 mph. Those tests demonstrated that preventing high winds from entering a garage is crucial in minimizing structural damage to a home. The primary insight for homeowners is that the roof and garage doors are particularly vulnerable areas of a home and should be reinforced to better withstand high winds. 

Research shows that there are several ways wind can cause your garage door to fail: 

  • High winds can cause weak garage door tracks to buckle. 
  • Flying debris can pierce your garage door. 
  • Inadequate attachment of the doors to the building can cause the door to detach and fail inward. 

After analyzing damage from Hurricane Ike (2008), the Joplin, Missouri tornado (2011), and the Moore, Oklahoma tornado (2013), IBHS found garage door damage was more likely to lead to structural damage in other parts of the home.  

As wind blows on a garage door, it exerts force or pressure. Typically, wind is redirected up and over the roof and around the  home, creating suction pressures that pull up on your roof and out on exterior walls (blue arrows). When a non–wind-rated garage door cannot stand up against the wind, it fails. Pressure then rapidly increases inside the home with additional internal forces pushing up on your roof and out on exterior walls (red arrows). Those combined internal and external forces can cause weak connections on your roof or exterior walls to fail, beginning the cascade of damage. 

Garage door damage is frequently observed after high wind events. Damage above occurred during Hurricane Michael and a tornado in Shawnee, Oklahoma (right). Photo Credits: IBHS and James Ladue, NWS.

Research Insights: A Compromised Garage Door Acts as a Damage Amplifier 

Both the full-scale testing and field observations are conclusive – once a garage door is compromised, damage to the roof, adjacent walls, or both is more likely. This is why garage doors earn the title of “damage amplifier,” as they can start a cascade of more significant damage to your home. Even if the door does not completely fail, wind leaking through a partially compromised door can produce outward forces on the roof and walls that a typical house is not designed to withstand. Post-event field damage investigations showed 90% of homes whose garage door survived the storm had no structural damage to the roof. A damaged garage door can lead to more costly insurance claims and extended time displaced from your home. 

Garage Door Solution

A Wind-Rated Garage Door 

IBHS recommends installing a wind-rated garage door that has been tested to show it can stand up to severe weather experienced in the geographical area where a home is located. These garage doors have specific components, such as track, jamb brackets, hinges, rollers, and reinforcing struts that can reduce the likelihood of damage in severe thunderstorm winds, derechos, and hurricanes and can narrow the path of damage in tornadoes (EF2 or less).   

Check for a wind rating label on your garage door.  

  • Wind-rated garage doors labeled with PSF values have been tested to withstand the forces or pressures that wind can exert on them. Look for a label inside the garage door that shows it is rated for wind pressures in positive and negative PSF (pounds per square foot) values.  
  • While modern building codes require garage doors to be wind-rated, without a label, it is difficult to know which doors are rated and which are not.  
  • If there is no label or the current label is missing this information, it may not be wind-rated, and it is best to purchase a new wind-rated garage door.   

Purchase a wind-rated garage door.  

  • Consult your local building code department or a local garage door dealer to find out the wind rating required for garage doors in your area. 
  • Look for doors tested to one of these standards:  
    • ASTM E330  
    • ANSI/DASMA 108  
    • Florida Building Code TAS 202  
  • Once the garage door is installed, ensure it has a label with the wind rating. Remember, don’t peel off the label! 

Codes & Standards

Building Codes and Label Requirements 

If you live in an older home with its original garage door, it is likely not wind-rated, as there were no such requirements prior to 2006. 

While most modern building codes mandate wind-rated garage doors, some areas in the U.S. have yet to adopt or enforce these standards. Consequently, even some newer homes may lack wind-rated garage doors. An IBHS survey revealed that 80-90% of garage doors away from coastlines are not properly labeled, with labels often missing essential information or being removed by the installer or the homeowner.  

To address the issue, IBHS collaborated with the Door & Access Systems Manufacturers Association (DASMA) and building code officials to simplify garage door labeling. According to the 2021 International Residential Code (IRC), garage doors must now have permanent labels. 

Want to Strengthen the Rest of Your Home? 

While a wind-rated garage door is essential for protecting your home against severe weather, there are additional steps homeowners can take to further reinforce their home. IBHS research shows that a stronger roof is another crucial element in helping a home withstand severe weather. Both the roof and the garage door are integral components of our beyond code construction method, known as FORTIFIED, developed from decades of IBHS research.