Garage door up and over vs roller

[TheGander]

So as not to drip feed, this is for my brother’s home and he is currently in a mental health rehab facility, his home has become very neglected and I am helping to get it back to a habitable state. This is relevant at because he has limited practical skills and if things aren’t bomb proof he tends to break them. His garage needs a completely new door. Old one was up and over. However he mostly accesses the space through a wooden door via his garden, not the “ car door”- he doesn’t have a car. Does it matter what type we go for? Thanks for any advice.

Go for what suits him best.
His physical and mental abilities and use of the space are the most important thing. Loads of people use garages like a shed and the car never goes in it, so no one will care.

Yes, go for what suits his needs, ability and budget.
fwiw an up and over door seems easier to maintain than a roller door. Or you could go for opening ‘barn door’ style on a swinging side hinge. Personally I find up and over doors easier to manually operate. Both could be made electric and open/close by a remote control/button. - but at a cost, which may be the deciding factor? The barn door style I’ve found tend to drop on the hinges, which then makes them awkward to open, but if it’s not really going to be used, this may not be a problem.
If you ask on a local Facebook, you may find a specialist garage door one-man band type company who would be willing to discuss his exact needs and be better placed to advise.

When our electric door broke down recently (came off it’s roller) we considered both options. A new roller would have kept that novelty-factor but was £1k more and we’ll be accessing the garage via an internal door from the house rather than the car door, most of the time. There’s more that can possibly go wrong with a roller door, and lots of cheap dodgy ones on the market too - don’t be fooled by the £895 incl fitting brigade - that’s what our previous owner bought, and fell apart after we moved in.
In the end we got a nice up n over and saved the money for more important internal decorating, which we look at every day.

When we were looking at replacing our garage door we looked at both types. We'd have lost some space by fitting a roller door so we went for up and over again.

I assumed maybe naively
that roller can be manual, not just electric? He’s familiar with up and over and if there’s any chance roller, even manual, is
more damage prone it’ll be up and over every time. Thanks for your input everyone. I have an “up and over “ guy having a look to quote this week.

If it's only being used for storage you can get side hinged models divided 1/3 2/3 and then you can use the smaller door just like a normal one.

Only thing I would say is that if it is an integral garage, think about insulation.

My house has an integral garage, and putting a good door on it that is well insulated makes the house a lot warmer.

We have just changed from an up and over to a roller. The garage is the first thing you see when you come up our drive and the roller version looks so much nicer. In therms of space I think the up and over was more intrusive inside the garage.

We changed our old, knackered, up and over for a roller one. It’s electric, but if there’s an issue it’s also easily manually rollable. It has a pole you attach and wind. It also seems more secure compared to the old one.

Whatever you go for, look at reviews of companies. We got ridiculous quotes from a couple of the big firms, and they were pretty pushy, but went with a local specialist who was really nice, far more reasonable price, and had great reviews compared with the others.

We just changed our up and over door to side hinged 2/3, 1/3 split, and find it so much easier.
The up and over doors ( and I suspect the roller doors) are supposed to be serviced every year. Not many people do. We didn’t and it jammed twice on us (in ten years, so not regularly), which was a huge problem because it jammed in the open position meaning we couldn't leave the house!

Thanks everyone. The garage is not attached to the house. It’s part of a row of garages for the whole cul de sac. It doesn’t matter what it looks like ( within reason) as it’s right at the end of the row and you only see see it is you have reason to go there.