Hangar style roll-up doors

[bobofthenorth]

Rather than hijack the other thread I started over.

Its been a while & I don't have any pictures but here's what I remember:

- we used 3" angle iron for the channels/tracks up the sides of the opening. 
- the rollers on the bottom of the door were just sealed bearings - they might have been on 3/4 shafts and maybe 2" OD
- we framed the doors up from light wall 1" tubing and then sheeted them with metal to match the building. 
- we didn't put a truss across the hinge on ours but we probably should have, for sure anything wider should have one
- our roll up mechanism was the height of simplicity.  We had a piece of 2" pipe in bushings on the very bottom of the door.  The motor that turned that shaft drove through a worm reduction gear so there was no risk of free fall.  The lift cables were fastened at the ceiling and wrapped on the 2" pipe at the bottom of the door.  As I recall we had maybe 5 across the width for redundancy - keeping them all uniformly tight was a major PITA.
- we ran the door with a reversing switch and there was a microswitch at the upper limit to stop it if someone got careless opening it.  Our "system" required some degree of operator knowledge because if you didn't stop the door properly at the bottom it would simply wrap the cable the other way and go right back up but nothing happened fast so that wasn't really a huge problem.

Since we built ours I've seen commercial versions with the lift from the ceiling.  I didn't like the looks of that and it cost them some opening height.  Depending on your wall thickness it may or may not work for you.  You can't put the lift on the outside of the building because it would end up between the door and the wall when the door is closed.  You could probably come up with some kind of a pulley arrangement buried in the wall and keep the opener at the top but on the inside of the wall.

If you're going to build one either build a scale model with cardboard or use a couple of 1x2s to make a full size model so you can figure out the lengths for the top and bottom sections.  Ours were equal and the top was hinged at the top of the opening.  That was a really stupid design that cost us about 2' of our available opening.  The top hinge should be above the opening and the bottom section should be slightly taller than the top section.  That way the door will open fully and the top section will actually go past horizontal when the door is fully open.

I really wish I had some pictures but if you guys are serious and in a hurry let me know & I can get somebody to take some.  If you're serious but not in a big hurry remind me next summer & I'll take some pictures myself.  If you hang out at a few airports you'll for sure see some doors like this and they'd have to have more engineering in them than ours did because ours had pretty well none.

[robertglines1]

got  the picture. Thanks.  Sometimes the light bulb just needs to be turned on.   Dick Eagler on board did his on a much larger scale  prob 30 ft wide.  Hadn't though about it for small door.   Thanks  Bob

[bobofthenorth]

Ours was at least 30 feet wide.  I think it was closer to 40 but I really can't remember exactly how wide it was. 

[Uglydog56]

My brother has a 40x70 quancet on his farm that he just installed a foldup door on.  They are the beez neez, but they cost money.  Like, Money.  I've seen a couple of home builts that worked just fine.  They both had the motor on the bottom of the door.