Garage Floor Crack: How to Make Door Fit

LESLIE: Ann in Tennessee is having an issue with a garage door. Tell us about the problem.

ANN: In the garage door, we have a problem with a crack in the concrete floor keeping the garage door from closing satisfactorily.

LESLIE: (overlapping voices) OK. Is your garage door made of wood?

ANN: The garage door is metal.

LESLIE: It’s metal.

ANN: Yes.

TOM: Is the crack displacing? In other words, is the floor sort of buckling up, Ann?

ANN: Yes. About a fourth to a half of an inch.

TOM: A fourth to a half of an inch. Alright. So, the easy way to try to fix this is sort of a way to cheat and that is to double up on the weatherstripping on the bottom of the garage door, so you have more cushion.

LESLIE: Oh, interesting.

TOM: Because if it’s displaced like that, you really have to break it out and repour a patch, because you’re not going to get it to lay back down again. And the reason Leslie asked you if it was a metal or a wood door is because if it was a wood door, you could recut it to fit. But because it’s a metal door, you’d have to beef up on the weatherstripping to try to get it to have enough cushion so that it would overlap that.

And then you’re going to – do you have a garage door opener on this?

ANN: Yes.

TOM: You’ll have to adjust the garage door opener so it closes properly. But if you have a buckled floor that’s keeping the door open, there’s no easy way to get that floor to lay back down.

Now the good news – if there is some good news – that replacing a concrete floor in a garage is not a terrible project because that concrete, if it’s like most concrete floors, is fairly thin – maybe about four inches thick – and usually, you can break it out with a sledgehammer; so the whole thing could be torn out and replaced in a few hours.

But if you want to try to stay away from doing that, I would just tell you to double up on the weatherstripping on the back of the garage door or you could add another piece that would be attached to the face of the metal door that had weatherstripping on it and that could be at a slight angle, so that you’ll get that seal. Because I presume you’re trying to get a good seal there, to keep water and insects out.

ANN: Yes. Yes, sir.

TOM: Yep. So there’s two ways that you can go with it, Ann. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.