Incorporating current garage door?

[JRSGodfrey]

For reasons various and complicated, I have to keep the garage door as part of my design, referenced below.

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... highlight=

Originally the door was to be removed and block wall constructed w/ a door. It's the rear wall in the diagram. I'm flipping the plan 180 and nixing the door. Access will now be from inside the house.

So, I need to keep the roll-up door -- it no longer has to work and the mechanism will be dissasembled -- to present to the outside world that it is still a garage.

I want to use the mass of the door to best affect. It's thick hardwood, but of course its divided into horizontal panels for rolling up. My first inclination is to screw drywall directly to the inside of the door, put a frame up on that drywall and screw through the rollup door and the drywall into the frame, taking care to seal it well at the edges. This would be my outside leaf.

Whatcha think?

Thanks,

Jay

[JRSGodfrey]

I meant this for the construction forum. Any moderators care to move it?

Thanks.

[knightfly]

OK, now that you've totally confused me as to where the garage door is in the pic, is it in front of you as you face the speakers, or behind, where the double door is shown, or?? And, is the door itself made with one of the panels being glass windows set in with small quarter-round molding? (enquiring minds, and all that :=)

[JRSGodfrey]

OK -- sorry for the fuzzy description.

The garage door is currently where the double door is at the bottom of the diagram.

Instead of building the new wall and doors, I will be using the current roll-up door as the exterior leaf.

The monitor wall shown in the diagram will then be at the bottom of the digram (full reversal) and a door to the house will be at the top of the diagram.

The roll-up door has no windows. It it approximately 8 feet across and 6 feet high and consists of 3 joined panels. It is framed into a masonry wall.

I'm going to roll up the door, remove the springs, close it and remove the overhead tracks. Then beef it up with sheetrock as I explained and seal it well, making it the outler leaf.

Just wanted to run it by y'all to see if there are any potential pitfalls.

Thanks.

Jay

[knightfly]

First, if you do this in the order you described, be sure to invite your local football team to help you - a single garage door as you described can weigh several HUNDRED pounds - I know, because one of the two single garage doors on my place (much cheesier than you describe) broke its spring (snapped while I was gone, old age I guess) and the only way I could get the door back up working alone was with two pry bars and some small blocks, working til I got enough clearance for a hydraulic floor jack to fit under the door, then raising the door as far as the jack would go (about 22 inches), then blocking the door at that height and adding more spacers on the jack, til I got the whole thing about halfway open.

Point is, if you remove the spring that should be AFTER the door is down and not going back up.

If the bottom of the door is wood, I would give it several coats of a good wood preservative first, such as Thompson's water seal, etc - then, before you lower the door for the last time, use acoustic caulk and run beads at the inside and outside of each of the horizontal joints (do this when each joint is at the curve in the track) so that when you close the door, all the cracks have double seals of caulk.

Then, seriously, I would call a door service and have THEM remove the spring. These things are wound up tight enough to make that heavy door seem like 5 pounds - the door guys use two special tools in the holes you will find spaced around that big steel collar at the end of the spring, and they carefully wind/unwind the spring one hole at a time, holding that collar with the other tool. Not for the faint of heart. You can get seriously hurt or killed doing this if you're not experienced.

Other than that, lots of REAL acoustic caulk - check the materials forum if you can't find it locally (hint - it's a waste of time looking at most Home Depots, I've only found 1 or 2 types of caulk in the larger quart tubes and nothing in either size that I would use acoustically... Steve

[JRSGodfrey]

Steve,

I'll take your advice and proceed. Thanks.

I thought that taking off the springs when they were slack (door up, c-clamped) would be doable. I was then going to block and tackle it down. Maybe I'll call some door services.

Thanks again!

Jay

[knightfly]

Yeah, it might be doable except for the fact that when the door is up, you can't get at the spring (and if you could, it would still be under quite a bit of tension) - If you have two heavy rods the diameter of the adjusting holes in the collar, you might get away with it - but I wouldn't recommend it when it'll probably cost about $80 to have someone who knows all the tricks take care of it. What's the cost of a broken arm or worse?

[JRSGodfrey]

Well, in NYC nothing is $80...

but after taking a good look at it, I will take your advice and get a pro to do it.

Thanks again for the good info, as usual.

Jay

[knightfly]

No prob - when my door spring broke, I thought I could do it myself too - but when I saw the forces involved and watched the guy do it, my lasting reaction was "can't play guitar very well with shattered wrists, screw that.."

Any time I'm aware of a possible danger, I'll mention it rather than have someone hurt from lack of information - Even at NYC prices, I don't feel it's worth broken bones... Steve