Garage door repairs in Fremantle
Most repair requests start with a door that has changed. It runs slower, it grinds, or it gets halfway and goes back up. Say what it does and roughly when it started, and add the brand if you can see a sticker on the bottom rail.
Merlin says to stop using a door that has begun grinding or scraping, or no longer runs as smoothly as it did, and to have it fixed straight away. Leave the opener off until the door specialist has looked.
Garage door service in Fremantle
Servicing is often a condition of the warranty, not an extra. Steel-Line's warranty is invalidated unless its products are serviced at least once a year by Steel-Line or an approved service partner. B&D suggests a first service within 12 months, then one every two years, or yearly for a motorised door or one that gets heavy use.
Sheltered doors age too. B&D's warranty brochure lists a lack of washing by rain among the things that shorten a door's life, including where an eave, carport or verandah reaches more than 600mm out from the wall. A door tucked under a deep verandah still needs a hose.
New garages and carports: two different policies
The City of Fremantle has two local planning policies for garages and carports, and which one you follow depends on the property. Local Planning Policy 2.9 (Residential Streetscapes) covers ordinary residential lots. Heritage-protected places, which include every property in a heritage area, come under Local Planning Policy 3.6 instead. Use only the policy that fits your lot.
On an ordinary lot (Policy 2.9): a garage or carport set in line with or behind the front wall of the house is deemed to comply. A carport can sit in front of the house if it is at least 1.5m from the street boundaries, no higher than 3 metres as seen from the street, and no wider than 6 metres on a frontage of 12 metres or more, or 3 metres on a narrower lot. Any part inside the primary street setback must be open on all sides, though it may have doors or gates that meet the fences policy.
At a heritage place (Policy 3.6): the City notes that single garages and carports were not built in Fremantle until the Inter-War era, and double carports were rare until the 1970s and 80s. So new ones go behind the building and should be visually unobtrusive from the street. Case by case, it may allow a single side garage set at least 1m behind the front building line and no more than 3.5m wide, or a double side garage set back at least 2m and no wider than 45 percent of the house front or 6 metres, whichever is less. A carport that projects forward of the building must be open on at least 3 sides, the street side included, with no door.
Around Fremantle
Leighton and Port Beach
BlueScope's TB-35 bulletin uses Leighton and Port Beach, along with Cottesloe and Scarborough, as its Perth examples of a surf marine environment, open to breaking surf and ocean spray.
The river and the Sound
The same bulletin classes Cockburn Sound as exposed and the Swan River west of the Narrows Bridge as calm, so which water a home faces changes how hard the salt works on its door.
May 1994
Land gales gusting up to 140 km per hour struck Perth and the south west on 23 and 24 May 1994. About 600 houses were damaged, and several lost their roofs entirely.
What we would do
Before you ask anyone to quote a door for a new garage or carport, find out whether the property is heritage-protected. If it is, Policy 3.6 can rule out a door on a carport at the front altogether, and a door specialist can only quote for an opening the City will accept.