What Is Going On
Most garage doors around here went in during a construction run from 1985 to 2015, with the median build year landing around 2004. That means the bottom seal and side weatherstripping on a lot of doors are original or close to it - vinyl and rubber parts that were never meant to last twenty years. In a cold-moderate climate band like this one, that seal material goes through a yearly cycle of hardening in winter and softening in summer. Every cycle, it loses a little flexibility. Eventually it stops closing the gap between the door and the slab, and cold air finds its way in along the bottom edge or up one side.
A draught you can feel standing near the door usually isn't a structural problem. It's a seal that's given up its shape. The rubber goes stiff, sometimes cracks, and no longer compresses against the concrete the way it did when it was new. On a 2000s-era door, that's wear, not failure - the kind of thing that shows up on a schedule, not as an emergency.
What looks the same from a homeowner's chair but isn't: warped panels, a door that hangs unevenly, or a gap that's only on one side. Those point to track or hardware issues, not seal wear, and they don't get better with a new strip of weatherstripping.
What to Check
Start at the bottom seal. Press it with your thumb - if it's stiff and doesn't spring back, or if it's cracked along the length, that's your draught source. Second, check the side and top seals where the door meets the frame; look for gaps you can see light through when the door is shut and the garage light is on.
Third, run your hand along the bottom seal on both ends of the door, not just the middle. Uneven wear at one corner points to a door that isn't sitting level, which is a different repair than a seal swap.
Fourth, if your home is on the older end of the 1985-2015 range, check whether the seal channel itself - the metal or vinyl retainer the seal sits in - is bent or pulled loose. On doors pushing toward twenty-plus years old, that retainer can warp before the seal itself gives out, and no amount of new weatherstripping will seat right in a bent channel.
How Local Conditions Play In
This area sits in a cold-moderate climate band, which means winters are cold enough to stiffen rubber and vinyl seals but not so severe that they crack outright the way they might further north. That's actually a middle-ground problem: the seals age slowly enough that homeowners often don't notice the gradual loss of draught protection until a cold front makes it obvious all at once.
Across the service area - which runs out to towns like Paloma Creek, Weston, Cross Roads, Aubrey, and Oak Point within about 11 miles, and further out to Fairview, Pilot Point, and Lake Dallas - the housing stock is fairly consistent: mostly 2000s construction across the named areas. That consistency matters for seal wear, because a door built in that window uses similar seal material and similar door and frame tolerances. If your neighbor's door started draughting last winter, yours is likely on the same clock.
With 34,952 owner-occupied houses across the area and a median household income above $110,000, most owners here are in a position to replace a seal proactively rather than waiting for it to fail outright, which is the cheaper way to handle this kind of wear.
