Price of a
garage door.

Only eight quotes include a garage door, which is still a small sample: we prefer to say so from the outset. They have one point in common that makes them easier to read: all provide for a steel sectional door for a standard opening 2.50 m wide, 2.10 m high in seven cases and 2.20 m in the last. The price differences therefore come neither from the type of door nor from its size, but from the model and its finishes.

The VAT rate depends on the building, not on the door: 10% for the garage of a home completed more than two years ago, 20% in new construction. Both columns are therefore given. The lintel only appears in our quotes for construction, extensions and barn conversions, where the opening is created in new masonry.

What our quotes do not allow us to price: the motor, which is never isolated on its own line. One quote specifies a manual door; another includes the door's electrical supply in a lump-sum electrical package that also covers shutters, lighting and sockets. Nor do we give a price for a tilting, roller, side-hinged or timber door: none of our lines describes one.

The sectional door is made of hinged horizontal panels that rise vertically, then slide on rails under the ceiling. It does not project in front of the garage: a car can park right up against it, which matters on a short or sloping drive, common in the mountains. On the other hand, it needs room above the opening and along the ceiling for the rails, to be checked before choosing.

The tilting door, in a single piece, pivots outwards before stowing under the ceiling: it needs clearance in front of the façade during operation. The roller door winds into a box above the opening and frees up the ceiling, useful when a beam or duct passes just behind the lintel. The side-hinged door, with two leaves, remains the simplest mechanically, but its open leaves take up the space in front of the garage.

Under snow, two details weigh more than elsewhere: the bottom seal, which must stay watertight when snow builds up against the door, and the slope of the access, which must not send meltwater back towards the garage. They are checked when taking measurements, along with the look of the door, to be matched with the other external joinery of the house.

A garage door is fitted in an opening spanned by a lintel, the beam that takes the load of the wall above the opening. In a new house or an extension, our masons build it at the same time as the walls: this is the €500 excl. VAT line in our quotes, to which is added a line that depends on the length of the opening.

In an existing house, the case is different. Enlarging an opening that is too narrow, or cutting one into a wall to turn a room into a garage, amounts to creating an opening in a load-bearing wall: propping, a lintel sized by an engineering consultancy, rebuilding of the reveals. That budget then far exceeds that of the door, and it is priced on site, wall by wall.

When the garage sits under the living rooms, the garage ceiling is also the floor of the house. Two of our quotes provide for insulation bonded under the slab there, at €61 and €65 excl. VAT per m² depending on the insulation and its thickness. Our guide to ground floor insulation details the techniques.

VAT. The reduced rate of 10% applies to the usual outbuildings of a home completed more than two years ago, such as a garage. In new construction, the rate is 20%. The details are in our guide to VAT on renovation work.

CE marking. Garage doors fall under a harmonised product standard, NF EN 13241+A2 of November 2016, which serves as the reference for CE marking. For a motorised door, the French Building Federation (Fédération française du bâtiment) points out that the installer who combines the door and its motor becomes a manufacturer within the meaning of the Machinery Directive: he carries out the risk analysis and is answerable for the marking. The instructions supplied with the door must mention it.

Authorisation. Replacing the door with a model of different appearance (colour, material, design) alters the façade: this is in principle a prior declaration (déclaration préalable) at the town hall. Converting the garage into a living space changes the use of the premises: a prior declaration if the load-bearing structures and the façade are not modified, a building permit otherwise.