Mancos Shale: The Ground Under a Grand Valley Garage

If you have lived in the Grand Valley for any length of time you have heard about the soil. Here is what it actually does to a garage door.

What the ground is

The valley sits on Mancos shale and the clay soils derived from it. Those clays are expansive: they take up water and swell, then shrink hard as they dry. The cycle is annual and it is driven as much by irrigation and landscape watering as by rainfall.

Why the garage is the exposed part

The garage slab and the apron outside it are usually the thinnest, least reinforced and least protected concrete on the property, and the garage is often the part of the house with the least landscape watering evening out the moisture around it. It moves first and it moves most.

What that does to the door

Vertical track is anchored to the jamb and the jamb sits on the slab. Move the slab and the track is out of plumb, so rollers load against one side of the rail. The door gets noisier, the opener works harder, and roller stems wear on one face.

The symptom people misread

A gap under the middle of a closed door with both ends sealing, or a gap that comes and goes through the year. Owners replace the seal, then replace it again. The seal is not the problem - the floor is not flat.

What can be done about it

Track can be re-shimmed and re-plumbed, and in many cases that restores normal operation without touching the concrete. A threshold seal fitted to the floor can close a persistent low spot. Consistent moisture around the structure - not letting the ground dry out completely and then be soaked - reduces the cycling. Slab work itself is a foundation job rather than a door job.

Free estimate — no charge for the visit

Tell us what the door is doing and we will tell you what it normally means in Grand Junction. Every job is quoted in person and in writing before any work starts.

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