garage door width

[Paul]

i'm building a garage and have gratefully received lots of friendly advice.

you have convinced me that it's too risky/hard to build a wooden door.

my question is, is 16 feet the widest sectional door you can get? i've googled plenty and that seems to be it.

i'd like something maybe 20/22 feet wide.

the alternative is a motorised roller shutter arrangement, how utilitarian do these sound & look? I'd like it to be cosmetically attractive?

cheers paul

[Andrew Mawson]

Paul,

IMHO roller shutter is the way to go. They range from galvanised steel utilitarian up to plastic coated and insulated obviously getting more pricey up the range.

A roller shutter has the huge advantage of not obscuring all that storage space in the roof like an 'up and over', you can park right up to it and still open it unlike normal doors, and the side walls are unobscured unlike the horizontal roll in a track types.

Andrew Mawson

[Paul]

thanks andrew

my height from the ground to the bottom of the trusses is 2.3m.

any idea what height of door would i get in there without a box on the outside?

will it be restrictive?

paul

[Andrew Mawson]

Paul,

The boxes are about 12" square on the ones on my shops - so loose 12" off your opening if you have no internal clearance over the opening.

I have a heavy duty industrial one on my garage that has no box, just the roll of laths, and for that I raised the first two joists up the rafters by about 14" to clear the roll. I'm in the process of building a further garage infront of the existing one - again using a roller shutter - and will use the same technique - I wanted a clear 8 foot of headroom on the first garage to (originally) get my S111 landrover complete with roof rack and spare tyre. This proved very useful as that garage is now full of engineering machinery which needed the height - hence the need for a new one in front !

Andrew

[Paul]

thanks again andrew.

i may have a problem here since the orientation of my garage is such that the door will run parallel to the roof ridge (i assume yours runs perpendicular to it?) which will give me a problem with height.

need to think about the asthetics of a box on the outside, although yesterday's shenanigans in the car park nearby show that i'll be ok with a

16ft door which makes sectional a possibility again.

that's a bit landrover you've got!

paul

[Paul]

meant "BIG"