Why Our Screens Are The Best!

Every product has a weakest link. If that link fails the product fails. Our manual garage door screens are the best because the weakest links have been eliminated. We have manufactured over 100,000 garage screens in the past 15 years. 

Imitation is said to be the highest form of flattery. We are proud to be the original manufacture of these manual garage door screen products and have spawned many imitators of our product in the last few years. Some of them even copied our name using variation at the end.

With garage door screen products the imitation has been a severe reduction in the quality of the product.  The imitation was done without any engineering, experience or investment in manufacturing equipment. The screen is relatively easy to manufacture but much more difficult to produce a high quality, high value product that lasts for years. 

How,  where and who builds the door matters. Door Sales Inc. has it's own industrial manufacturing plants. In the age of the internet anyone can put up a website and make all kinds of claims to be the best, the largest, the greatest, etc. etc. Come visit one of our plants you will find the following: Industrial manufacturing buildings, offices,  industrial machinery, engineering, showroom, research and development, documentation and all the other things that make a real manufacturer. Visit some of our competitors at their locations you will see their plant looks just like their home or another competitors "corporate" office is an independent answering service. Take a look through our website at all the other door products we manufacture for residential and industrial customers. We engineer, build and test all our products. 

With over 100,000 doors manufactured we have a proven track record of quality products. Our doors are in every US State, Canada, Mexico,  Germany, England, France, Japan, Russia, Hungary, South Korea, Italy, Bahamas, Grenada, Brazil, Argentina, Barbados, Antigua, Martinique, St. Bart's, St. Thomas, Philippines, Australia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Poland, Portugal, Spain, South Africa and many others. 

Below will give any consumer the facts why our residential manual screens are better than any other on the market. We can prove our product is better, not just say it.

Most of the screens use fiberglass screen material. It comes from 3 US sources and the screen quality is similar. We also use vinyl coated polyester mesh for our higher quality doors. Our vinyl coated mesh is an open mesh for use in ventilation screening. All our screening comes from the USA several other companies use screen from China. In general all the screen mesh is very similar, but that is where the similarities end.

 1.) Binding Material

What is the binder?

The binding material is the backing that is sewn opposite the hook (Velcro), zipper and bottom weather-strip sweep. The binder sandwiches the screen to protect it from fraying under pressure and to stabilize the squareness and size of the entire door screen.

Why does the binder matter?

The binder keeps the door square and the size consistent. Using a material such as polypropylene, nylon tape or seat belt webbing the door will shrink. Over time the zipper will contract and create a gap at the floor. The sides and width also contract so the screen will not seal. 

Sun and weather breaks polypropylene, nylon tape and seat belt webbing down. They fade and eventually disintegrate. The amount of sun and weather exposure contributes to the speed at which this happens.

The proper type of binder also allows the sewn process to be done consistent and high quality. For example the use of a polypropylene binder will draw the screen fabric up during the sewing process. The size of the finished product can very several inches between types of sewing machines.

What type of binder does Door Sales use?

Door Sales Inc. uses a binder manufactured from a vinyl blended material with a scrim base designed for our screen doors. Our material is coated and rolled into large rolls and then we slit it down to specific widths. 

This process take more time and investment in capital machinery and engineering. It is not off the shelf product. Below is picture of the slitting process.

We take these extra steps because our binder material will not shrink.  Our material will not fade under normal use, fading requires the material being exposed to the sun all the time for more that 5 years.

When sewn our material has a minimal impact on bunching or puckering of the fabric.

What type of binders do your competitors use and why?

They use polypropylene webbing, seat belt webbing, nylon tape or no binder at all.

The simple reason for why they use these off the shelf products is because it is cheep and readily available. 

They have looked at factors such as tensile and tear strength and believe these products will work. The problem is that tensile and tear strength have no bearing on a screen that weighs less than 5 lbs. 

A seatbelt webbing that has a tear strength on 6,000 lbs will not break on this screen, but it will shrink and fade. It is designed for interior use. When your screen shrinks and does not seal, it lets in bugs and blowing debris underneath the screen. Tear strength sounds great for marketing but has no functional use for garage door screens.

Polypropylene and seatbelt webbing create a significant amount of puckering when being sewn. This is due to the thickness of the webbing and the thin mesh of the screen being pushed by the sewing machine at the same time.

Using no binding causes the screen to un-ravel over time.

2.) Thread & Sewing

Door Sales uses a specific type of nylon thread that does not degrade when exposed to the sun and rain. Our sewing is done with lock stitching so that  if a thread is cut the door will not unravel.

Our competitors do not use consistent thread types or stitch types. 

In general our competitors do not engineer their products or manufacture them. They sub-contract out the process without formal engineered documents. What you get from them is in-consistent manufacturing. Some even offer the materials for you to sew it yourself.

Our sewers have at least 10 years experience sewing our screens. The work is very consistent and to our exact engineered designs.

3.) Bottom Weather-strip Pocket

Our bottom weather-strip pocket and sweep is made of the same material as our binder. The vinyl starts as liquid that is merged with a scrim base to make it both tear resistant and consistent in it's properties.

Several of our competitors use a material that is designed for interior furniture. The material is a vinyl with a fabric attached to the back with no scrim in the vinyl. It works great for furniture because you can glue the backing to furniture foam.  It is not designed for exterior where it will be scraping against concrete or asphalt and exposed to the elements. 

The scrim material in our vinyl crates a much higher tear resistance and eliminates stretch.

4.) Zipper

The zipper we use in our standard doors has been selected as the optimum zipper for durability and cost. The standard doors use 7-8MM coil zipper with a double pull. In our heavy duty doors we use 10MM molded zipper. The 10MM is a heavy duty premium zipper. 

The zipper that we use in our doors have a backing, that combined with our binder minimizes shrinkage.

Our zippers are finished with a material that is designed for exterior so they do not rust. The 10MM zippers are made of molded plastic.

Some of our competitors use zipper with no binder and  4-5MM coil zipper. They will not hold up.

Any questions you have about the quality of our product call us at 800-839-2293.

PO Box 215
Carmel, IN 46082-0215
317-846-6750  fax 317-846-6753

032505