Up and Over Garage Doors Canopy and Retractable Door Gear

Up and over or ‘single panel’ garage doors offer high levels of security and are very reliable. Their mechanisms have been refined over the years but they still work in pretty much the same way as they did when they were originally developed.

Up and over garage doors are available with 2 main types of door gear. The door gear is the parts and mechanism that allow the door panel itself to move.

Canopy Door Gear

Canopy door gear has traditionally been the most popular type of gear system used on up and over garage doors. They are reasonably priced and quick and easy to fit. The weight of the door is usually counterbalanced with a torsion spring that runs across the top of the garage door frame. This is anchored to the door with cables running down each side of the door.

Canopy doors do not need any tracks going back into the garage and they offer pretty much the full available drive through width as the mechanism does not take up any additional space in the opening.
Canopy door gear is usually only available on doors up to 8ft wide as this type of mechanism does not work as effectively with heavier doors. Although some manufacturers including Henderson garage doors, did at one stage introduce some larger models with reinforced canopy gear.

Canopy doors can be automated; however, this usually requires the use of a canopy ‘bow arm’ conversion kit that reduces the drive through height of the door and increases the cost.

Retractable Door Gear

As their name suggests, retractable doors fully ‘retract’ back into the opening when the door is in the open position. This type of door gear requires horizontal tracks running back inside the garage.

The weight of the door is usually counterbalanced with springs attached to arms on either side of the garage door which does slightly reduce the drive though width.

Retractable door gear is much more robust and the side spring mechanism can support the heavier double size doors that are wider than 8ft.

Retractable up and over garage door gear is a very reliable, robust and smooth operating mechanism that can easily be automated without the need for any additional conversion equipment.

Retractable Plus Door Gear

The side spring mechanism of standard retractable door gear means that the pivot arms protrude into the opening. This does reduce the drive through width slightly and sometimes those valuable millimetres can make all the difference. Some manufacturers offer a retractable ‘plus’ door gear on some size doors. This system raises the arms above the height of the wing mirrors on most standard cars.