Tip-Up and Up-and-Over Garage Doors

• One-piece steel or timber panel
• Counterbalance spring mechanism
• Motorisable with the right operator

A tip-up door — also called up-and-over — is a single rigid panel that tilts outward and slides back overhead on a counterbalance mechanism. It is the door on most older South African houses, and there are good reasons it lasted.

Where it still makes sense

The mechanism is simple, there is very little to go wrong, and the panel itself will outlive several motors. On a garage where the door opens twice a day and the budget matters, it is hard to beat.

What to know before you choose one

• The panel swings outward as it opens, so a car parked close to the door blocks it.
• Sealing is not as good as a sectional door — the panel is one piece and the gaps are at the edges.
• Spring tension is what carries the weight. When a tip-up door becomes heavy or slams, that is the spring, not the door.

Repairs and replacement

We service tip-up doors as well as supply them, and we can motorise most of them with the correct operator. Where the panel is beyond saving, a roll-up or sectional replacement usually fits the same opening without structural work.

How we build it

Every door is manufactured to your measured structural opening at our Sandton works in Tarlton, not cut down from a stock size. Slat is roll-formed on our own line, guides are cut and drilled to the opening height, and the springs are wound to balance the finished curtain weight. Powder coating is applied after fabrication so the colour holds across the whole assembly rather than just the visible slat.

What decides the specification

Two things: the width of the opening and how often the door moves. Spring life is measured in cycles rather than years, so a door opening forty times a day needs a different spring and drive to one opening twice, even at identical dimensions. After that it is environment — salt air, washdown, dust or forklift traffic each change the material and the hardware. That is why we survey before quoting.

Installation and handover

Fitted by our own teams, never subcontracted. Guides are set plumb and square, the curtain is hung and balanced, limits are set, and every safety device is tested and adjusted within safe closing force before we leave. You get a demonstration of normal operation and of the manual override, because the first time you need that override should not be during an outage.

Warranty and aftercare

Workmanship is covered for twelve months and motors carry their manufacturer warranty, which we register for you. Because we manufactured your door, we can tell you its exact specification years later and we hold the wear parts for it rather than ordering them in — which is the practical difference between a repair that happens this week and one that waits on a supplier.

Maintaining a tip-up door

The counterbalance mechanism is the whole door. When a tip-up becomes heavy, slams on closing or refuses to stay up, that is the spring or cable rather than the panel — and it is entirely repairable. Keeping the pivot points and side channels clean and lubricated extends that mechanism by years, and it takes minutes.

Replacing a tip-up door

Where a panel is rusted through or the mechanism has seized beyond economical repair, a roll-up or sectional replacement almost always fits the same structural opening without building work. We measure the opening rather than the old door, so the replacement fits the building as it is today.

Motorising a tip-up door

Most tip-up doors can be automated with the correct operator, provided the counterbalance is sound and the panel is straight. The mechanism swings outward as it opens, so the operator has to be matched to that motion rather than to a vertical lift — fitting the wrong type is the most common reason an automated tip-up runs badly.