If your door is past repair, rust through the bottom panel, splitting wood on a 20-year-old hardboard, structural damage from a serious impact, replacement is the honest answer. We install insulated steel doors from Clopay, Wayne Dalton, Amarr, and Haas. Insulated is the Wisconsin standard. R-values from 12 to 18 keep attached-garage heat in and your bonus-room floor warmer in February. We'll walk you through panel style, window options, and opener pairing before any deposit changes hands.
New Garage Door Installation pricing: Standard 16-foot insulated steel doors install for roughly $1,400 to $2,400 with hardware and removal of the old door. Single 9-foot doors run $900 to $1,500 in the same lineup. Custom carriage-house styles, premium glass, or full-view aluminum can run $2,800 to $5,200 or higher depending on what you pick. We quote firm numbers after measuring and selecting the door.
We start with a measure-up at your house, never a phone quote. Rough opening width and height, headroom, sideroom, and the existing track and jamb condition all affect the install. We bring sample swatches and a tablet with the manufacturer style catalogs so you can see what a Clopay Gallery in Bronze actually looks like next to your siding before you commit. Order goes in same day if you're decided, lead time at the regional distributor is usually 10 to 14 business days for stock styles, 3 to 5 weeks for custom orders. Install day takes most of one full day for a standard 16-foot door, less for a single 9-foot. We remove the old door, the old tracks, and the old springs, haul everything away, and put up the new system from the brackets out. New opener pairing, if needed, adds about 90 minutes at the end. Cleanup includes vacuuming the bay before we leave.
Single 9-foot door runs four to five hours from the truck arriving to final cleanup. Standard 16-foot double runs six to eight hours, often a full workday. The variables are whether the old tracks need to come out (almost always yes, because new doors use different bracket spacing) and whether the opener is being replaced or kept. Swapping the opener at the same time adds about 90 minutes. We start installs at 8 am so we finish in daylight, which matters in December when the sun sets at 4:30. Custom carriage-house doors can stretch into a second day.
Often yes, with a couple of checks. The opener's horsepower needs to match the new door's weight; a 1/2 HP unit handles a single uninsulated door but can struggle with a heavy 16-foot insulated double. The rail length needs to match the new door height. The opener arm bracket on the new door has to line up with the trolley position. We test the opener before and after install and adjust force and travel limits to the new door weight. If your opener is over 10 years old, this is a natural time to replace it; bundled price runs $480 to $780 over the door cost.
Yes, included in every installation. We unbolt the old door panel by panel, unhook the springs and cables safely, pull the tracks off the jamb, and haul everything to our truck. The old steel and hardware go to the Dane County metal recycler. The old wood (if you have a wood door) goes to disposal. There's no separate haul-away charge. The only thing we leave is the old opener if you're keeping it, which we reinstall on the new door before we leave.
Standard insulated steel doors in common sizes and colors (white, almond, sandstone) are usually one to two weeks from order to install. We keep some popular sizes in our Madison-area warehouse for faster turnaround. Custom colors add another one to two weeks. Carriage-house and full-view aluminum doors run four to eight weeks because they're built to order. If you have a hard install date (selling the house, hosting an event), let us know up front and we'll source the closest in-stock match that meets your timing.
For a like-for-like replacement (same size, same opening, no structural changes), the City of Madison does not require a permit. If you're changing the opening size, adding a window where there wasn't one before, or modifying the header, you'll need a building permit from Madison Building Inspection. Same rules apply in Middleton, Fitchburg, Sun Prairie, and Verona for the most part, though each suburb has slight variations. We handle the permit application as part of the install if one is needed; the fee runs $75 to $150 depending on jurisdiction.
Manufacturer warranty on the door itself runs 10 years on the panels (rust-through and delamination) and lifetime on the springs we install with new doors. Hardware (rollers, hinges, brackets) is 3 to 5 years. Our install labor warranty is 2 years and covers any workmanship issue including track alignment, header bracket, weather seal, and opener arm installation. If anything fails in that window we come out at no charge. Keep your invoice; we need it along with the serial number sticker on the door for warranty claims.
