What type garage door do you have in your shop and what are the pros and cons?

[flatrock58]

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[Stuart Caruk]

Here's a couple pictures of my welded up overhead doors from a couple unheated bays in my shop. I'm running off some high tolerence parts in my CNC shop, so I don't want to swing the doors open and screw up the dialed in parts that are running, but they are the same doors, only with 2" rigid foam insulation glued to the insides.

I whipped up a sketch in my CAD system to figure out the geometry for the cylinders. 

I used self drilling siding screws to attach the siding, except for the 1/4" where I used a drill, as the self drilling screws don't work on thicker tubing.

The doors are pretty darned stout, even though they look light. They have supported 12" snow loads, countless wind storms, and I used to stand on one and have my wife lift me up to the roof to clean it. The forklift has hit one of them at least 3 times and yet the door is still doing fine.

These 2 doors have been up for over 20 years and are still going strong.




The photo above shows the general layout. 2" square tubing frames the door. The pieces on the side, and the gussets are 1/4" wall, the rest is 1/8" wall. The cylinders are 36" stroke x 2 1/2" diameter cylinders with piloted check valves on the butts of the cylinder.



You can see the piloted valves on the butts of the cylinder above. They have to see hydraulic pressure to allow the cylinder to retract and the door to close. You could cut the hydraulic lines and the door would still stay up. In order for it to fall, both cylinders would have to fail. Either cylinder can raise or lower the door, it just stays far more level with 2 of them.



Best part is watching the video of a couple kids trying to break into the lower shop. They were pushing and tugging, and even resorted to trying to pry the door up to open them. Neighborhoods kids aren't all that bright after all...

[Randy88]

Stuart, nice looking doors, you put your gussets along the sides of the door for strength, I put mine along the bottom across the front for its width.    

I put lock valves on both cylinders, that require oil on both sides to activate it, and I used a rotary flow divider to equalize the oil flow between the cylinders, but mine are longer and much larger than yours, I'd have to measure again, but I'd guess offhand the rams in my cylinders are 2.5 inch and the bore is 5 inch or so but I can measure them.   Mine are also longer, they go down way over half way the height of the door, been too many years to remember for sure, I use the door every day and never notice them at all anymore.    

A couple years after I built my door, an airport in the area had one custom fabricated, I was speechless, it must be 25 feet tall and over 80 feet long, they open the whole end of the building up to get larger twin engine planes and jets in.

[Randy88]

I just thought of a con for the one piece hydraulic doors, its never been an issue for me, but I know of several others in the area, that anchored theirs to the building itself and tied it into a wood frame pole shed type and after years of use and not anchored good enough, they literally pulled the building apart, as in those prefabbed rafters, they broke them and severely cracked the wooden posts the door was fastened to.    Not to bash any of the door makers, but one brand doesn't do a very good job of fastening theirs to the building.   One guy I know told me his building has every rafter in the whole shed damaged, when he climbed up into the rafters he saw how bad it was, he ended up adding more bracing and fixing every rafter and then installed large metal rods the entire length of the shed across the rafters, then added anchor braces to the back of the shed in an angle and those rods are anchored into the ground on the back of the building, that shop is about 60 feet long.   Its been a few years since I've seen it, but I think he has turnbuckles on it near the ground so he can tighten those rods up if need by.    One piece doors, especially those large ones, put a lot of strain on the building if its not installed right.    Mine is self standing, has nothing to do with the building per say, and we filled in the area between the building and the door and insulated it, but its not fastened to the building at all, I had to do it this way on an older remodel job of an old barn.    

Also, with these large farm shops, and huge one piece doors, a local guy in his shop, the first time he used his, the suction it created as it first starting opening, sucked his metal ceiling off his shop and pulled it down half way across the shop ceiling, the larger the door and more air tight the building, the worse this is, even opening up a walk door isn't enough, he had to install another overhead smaller door and to this day, that has to be open before he thinks about using his one piece door, but his is 20 feet tall and maybe 50ish feet long.     I talked to the contractor that built his building and boy talk about upset, he subbed out the door to a company that builds those doors and so he had to stand the ceiling, I never saw it, but was told by the guy doing the work, it sucked the tin and insulation right off the ceiling and laid it on the floor, he was nailing up the tin till that day, now he screws it on.    He also told me that he's seen it, but didn't do any of it, where the tin is screwed on and it literally buckles the tin from the suction the door creates.   I've been in a few of those shops, even with another door open, your ears will hurt as the door opens, its incredible the air movement/pressure they create on larger doors, once open a few feet, its a non issue.  Just thought I'd pass that along, on smaller doors, doubt many would notice it at all, that and door sales people will never tell you those details.   

[Kbeitz]

Sounds like a good place for a soft start VFD.

[Randy88]

Just to crack the door six inches, the cylinder hardly moves, as in a fraction of an inch, with the mechanical advantage it has, multiply that across the width of the door and the initial pressure differential is tremendous, I think that's the correct term, please correct me if I'm wrong.    Those vfd's slow the motor, if I'm right, a certain pressure and gallons per minute are needed to overcompensate the lock valves on the cylinders, so in my mind, I'm not thinking the door would open, if so, still not slow enough to deter this issue, the best way is to open another door or I open my walk door, and feather the hand lever till its cracked open, but most commercial doors use electric bang bang valves and a push button to operate the door, all depends on how its set up.    

[Stuart Caruk]

My buildings frames are based on 8" sch 80 pipe for posts, with 12" x 35# WF plates. Think of a self supporting timber frame structure only way overkill. My roof isn't even remotely loaded from my doors. I still have 2 sets of rotor blades from a Bell 206 long ranger that I was going to install for a ceiling fan. Sadly I haven't gotten around to it yet. I planned for a couple speeds, from gentle breeze, to open the doors and clean out the shop... My roof was engineered to support those loads...

[Randy88]

Stuart, how long of span are your wide flange beams set to hold up the roof.   In the pictures you had a tubing gusset set vertically above the doors on the end, are those for the hinges, is there anything along the top of the door evenly spaced for hinges or just at the ends by those gussets?

We're looking at putting on a lean to a 100 foot long building and want to have wide open bays, was wondering how far apart your supports were in your shop, also what did you figure for roof loading in pounds per square foot?

[Kbeitz]

to open the doors and clean out the shop...

Do you have license to fly that building?

[Stuart Caruk]

The 12" WF is sitting on pipe on 18' centers. It was designed to support a 10 ton bridge crane along the entire span. The structure sits on a monolithic concrete pour 8" - 11'' thick, and has a couple 20' x 30' steel plates 1" thick sitting on top of that. I'm pretty sure it can take the uplift from my ceiling fan. If you look close in the photo above the door, the truss goes out to support the roof rafters above, allowing space for the crane rail gantry to clear the roof trusses. Funny thing is that the crane never got built after I told the main customer that I needed it for to go pound sand. The main crane rail turned into a spreader bar for a couple jobs, and now it's holding up the front of my sawmill shed. If you look close you can see all the spreader holders still welded in place. Some day I'll cut them off...

[Al_Smith]

My entire shop,60 by 70 is made of insulated garage door panals .It has 3 14 high 16 wide overhead doors and 1 10 by 10 in the side .The roof is 22 gauge decking with 1" styrofoam under .7"  thick concrete with 3/4" rod on 12" by 12" .Crane rails and one 13.5" cylinder drive on car hoist .I've got infrared hanging gas heat ,about 300,000 BTU but I don't use but very rarely .Too expensive .
The place is a mess,it will take me 6 months once I retire to get it straighten out .The center bay has a 28 feet bandsaw mill I've been working on forever it seems .Nice shop but it's 28 miles from my house .
I'm going to build another one at the house which will be around 36 deep by 40 wide .Something I can heat rather than the size of a barn. I've got enough bar joists ,all the roofing and siding,standing seam 22 gauge just need something for posts .Pipe ,beams doesn't matter they all work .I've got a gaggle of stuff not as much as Kbeitz but a lot .

[Brad_bb]

If you don't insulate and heat a shop, you're going to get temp swings which will cause condensation on cars, tools etc. I have classic cars and one of the main reasons for degradation is condensation (and mice of course).  Just think about any wood working tools like a table saw, planer, or jointer bed.  You don't want those rusting!  Heck if you even leave any wood on one of those, even in a heated shop you'll get moisture between the wood and bed.  Even though you're in GA, I'd still have an insulated and heated shop to prevent condensation in the winter.  Condensation happens when you rapidly pass through the dew point by dropping temperature too quickly and the metal stuff inside is much colder than the air.  Then it's like condensation in your soda can in summer.  I have Clopay brand insulated doors on my newer shop.  I've used CHI over head doors as well on my old shop and they work well too. 

[Al_Smith]

I'll attest to the condensation problem .If I think about it usually during spring and fall I use fans which help .The next building I'm going to do will have a coupola vent .If they worked on those big dairy barns they should work on a smaller building .

[Randy88]

Even if you don't heat your shop, the single best thing you can do to help eliminate condensation is to put down insulation under the concrete before you pour it.    My old shop didn't have any under the concrete and even with heating the shop we got some condensation, with our newer shop, we insulated under the concrete and it took a couple years to get the heat up and working and my door on and functioning, in that time we had very little condensation in the shop or on the floor compared to our old shop with no insulation under the floor.    

If you also go with in floor heat compared to about any other heat source, it takes very little warmth to take the moisture out of the building.    With heat below the concrete floor, your warming the floor and that's the place were condensation is the worst, its also the place where your equipment sits on.      With any other heat source, your warming everything first and then the floor last, when cement sweats, the floor is the worst thing to try to dry off, with heated floors, its the first thing to dry out and then the bulk of the condensation is eliminated.  

Concrete is also a huge sponge for moisture, once the condensation starts, its takes a long time to get it back dried out without using heat, causing moisture issues inside the building for a much longer period of time.