What's the advantages and disadvantages of a sectional Garage Door with a Pedestrian Door?

You've probably seen pictures of pedestrian doors on sectional garage doors in the past. They look really great and seem very convenient, so people have become fond of posting galleries of them all over the Internet. The rationalization behind overhead garage door with pedestrian doorsseems to be, "Instead of opening that big door to get in the garage, I could just walk through a much smaller one." Of course, to be fair, that's definitely the case for many building layouts.

Application of garage door opening pedestrian doors in different scenes

The most common residential setup is where the garage connects to the house's basement. This would make it impossible for it to be accessible through a regular access steel door (36"x 78" or 91 x 198 cm) on the side of the garage and fairly difficult for there to even be one next to the garage door.

Commercial industrial garage doors can also come with pedestrian doors. Obviously, going through a small access door is going to be a lot easier than lifting an entire industrial garage door with dimensions of 16'x 16' (4.9 x 4.9 m).

The size of pedestrian doors can vary greatly from one brand to another. However, the vast majority of them are going to be 32 inches wide by 78 inches high (81 cm x 198 cm).

Now that you have a better idea of what a pedestrian door entails for a residential setting, let’s move on to talking about the pros and cons of having one.

The advantages of a sectional Garage Door with a Pedestrian Door

As we mentioned earlier, if you have a garage that is connected to the basement of your house, there is probably not going to be a way to install a conventional access door. Therefore, it would be practical to go with a pedestrian door, especially if your home has a double garage door (e.g. one that is 16 feet wide).

In some urban settings, your building density may be such that there isn't sufficient side space, making the installation of a pedestrian door especially important. Even if the door in question is just 8' or 9' wide (2.4 or 2.7 m), you'd be wise to keep the belongings you keep in the garage from view.

Should a prolonged power outage ever take place, you'll find having an alternative entrance to be very beneficial if you use your garage for storage.

The disadvantages of a sectional Garage Door with a Pedestrian Door

The cost of one of these doors and the safety system that is required to go along with it is probably the main drawback of choosing a pedestrian door. Without that safety system, your garage door could suffer major damage, so you definitely can't skip it in an attempt to save money. Sometimes, the cost of installing a pedestrian door to a single door garage is as much as it would be for a full garage door system minus the walk through access.

If the garage door is outfitted with an electric garage door opener, you need to make sure the pedestrian door is always properly closed. Otherwise, the device could operate the opener when the door is open and cause serious damage.

Pedestrian doors cannot be installed on garage doors of any real width. The bare minimum width required is 8 feet (2.4 m). Furthermore, if your garage door is a rectangular model with an embossed design, the placement of the rectangles will be restricted.

Finally, the more openings you put into a garage door–for any reasons–the more energy efficiency is going to be decreased. If insulation and weatherproofing are priorities for you, then you' ll have to choose that or the pedestrian door.