Wooden doors are designed to fail by their design.
All kinds of places to trap snow and rain, I prefer
a flat metal one, without windows. Especially the
ones in the next-to-top row. The burglars love those.
Break the window, reach in and pull the emergency
release cord, pull the arm out as the other hand is
raising the door. Within 5 seconds.
Standard reminder to those that have such an arrangement-
Cut it off, put the release handle much higher, and have a
coat hanger handy to grab the release handle if you need it.

"montana wildhack" wrote in message
news:2005041318383575750%montana@wildhackinvalid.. .
We have determined that our old wood garage doors need to be replaced.
There's a good local place to buy new doors, but before we have to
listen to some salesman, I thought perhaps I could gather some wisdom
here.

We live in NE Ohio, so we get a lot of snow, a good amount of rain,
very strong wind and very hot, humid summers. The garage is old (the
house is 1929), detatched, unheated, brick and cinderblock-ish. We
don't have any kids to run into the door as they learn to drive.

We want to have good doors with windows that will last a long time (but
not cost a fortune). I'm reading up on the materials used, but
honestly, I don't know what really fits our needs. We don't have any
preferences, but we don't want cheap, ugly, curse ourselves (and the
salesman) later for being dopes doors.

Have you any experience and wisdom to share with me?