Bestland Garage Door Service Shares Tips to Prep Your Home for Cooler Weather WFRV August 2025

Getting Ahead of the Season — Bestland on WFRV Local 5

The end of August does not feel like garage door weather. That is exactly the point Jeffrey Pinney from Bestland Garage Door Service came to WFRV Local 5 to make. In Northeast Wisconsin, the first genuinely cold nights are only about six weeks out from Labor Day, and the homeowners who deal with their garage door now are the ones who are not waiting in line when it turns.

Call in late August and you get an appointment that week. Call after the first hard freeze, when every worn spring in the county gives out at once, and the wait is considerably longer.

What Summer Did to Your Garage Door

A door that has been running all summer is not in the same condition it was in May. Heat and humidity do quiet damage:

• Lubricant thins and burns off. Heat drives it out of hinges, rollers, and bearings faster than any other season, which is why doors often sound worse in August than in April.
• Seals dry out and crack. Sun exposure makes the rubber bottom seal brittle. It usually fails in the fall, right when you need it.
• Humidity rusts springs and cables. Surface rust shortens spring life and frays cable strands well before anything visibly breaks.
• Hardware works loose. Metal expands, contracts, and vibrates through a summer of heavy use, and bolts back themselves out.
• Summer is the high-traffic season. Bikes, mowers, boats, and kids mean far more cycles per day than the door sees in February.

The Cool-Weather Prep Checklist

Jeffrey walked Local 5 viewers through what a proper pre-season prep covers:

• Lubricate hinges, rollers, springs, and bearings with a proper garage door lubricant. Skip WD-40, which is a solvent and strips the grease you want to keep
• Inspect and replace the bottom seal if it is cracked, flattened, or has gaps at the corners
• Check the perimeter stop molding along the sides and top of the opening
• Tighten hinges, brackets, and track bolts
• Test the door balance with the opener disconnected
• Look over cables and rollers for fraying, slack, and flat spots
• Run the auto-reverse and photo eye safety tests
• Confirm the opener battery backup still holds a charge before storm season
• Sweep leaves, seed pods, and gravel out of the bottom track

Springs, cables, and track adjustment are the exceptions on this list. Those are under extreme tension and belong to a technician. See our cable repair service and garage door spring repair.

Weather Sealing Is the Cheapest Comfort Upgrade You Can Make

If you only do one thing before the temperature drops, make it the seals. A worn bottom seal and cracked stop molding let in cold air, blowing snow, water, and mice, and on an attached garage that cold transfers straight into the rooms above and beside it.

Replacing seals is inexpensive, fast, and pays for itself over a single Wisconsin winter in heating cost and aggravation. It is also the difference between a dry garage floor and an icy one in January.

If Your Garage Is Attached or Heated, Think About Insulation

An uninsulated steel door is essentially a large sheet of metal between your house and the weather. If your garage is attached, heated, or doubles as a workshop, an insulated door changes how the space feels and how hard your furnace works.

If your current door is old enough that seals and insulation have both failed, replacement often makes more sense than patching. Browse the options on our garage door installation page.

Why Late Summer Beats Late Fall

Beyond the scheduling advantage, there are practical reasons to do this now. Parts and doors have lead times, and those stretch as the season turns. Technicians can work comfortably outside. And a small repair caught in August is a routine visit rather than an emergency call at 6 a.m. in a snowstorm.

A full garage door tune-up covers every item on the checklist above in a single visit. If something is already wrong, our garage door repair team is available 24/7.

Watch the Full Segment

Watch the August 2025 Local 5 Live segment here: Watch on WeAreGreenBay.com

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Related Press Appearances

Also read our fall tune-up segment (Oct 2024) and our holiday garage readiness tips (Nov 2025).

Book Your Pre-Season Service

Get ahead of the season while the calendar is still open. Call Bestland Garage Door Service at (920) 789-3667 or visit bestlandgaragedoor.com. We serve Green Bay, Appleton, and all of Northeast Wisconsin.