I was just thinking about the wasted space in my garage. The ceiling is slightly over 10ft but the garage doors are 7ft tall. The garage door rails hang down at the 7ft level so that is the height where the retracted garage doors hang. Is it possible to get the garage doors to rise up higher and hang closer to the 10ft ceiling?
Mine is the same way. You'd have to reconfigure the rails so they go height at the door but not pull back as far. The opener may have to be reconfigured.
I don't see much or a gain from it considering the work needed.
I don't get it. The door will still be 7 feet high so you can't park anything taller than that in the garage. You want to put shelving under the door and above the car? Why not just put shelving above where the door goes?
I used to have 10' ceilings in my apt and in the long hall I just ran slats from one side to the other, resting on the molding. Stored a tremendous amount of stuff there. Afraid I'd forget it when I moved out, but didn't.
Well, with the doors up higher you could have room for 8ft tall storage shelves or other tall items. The cost would be the additional length of door track, although a counterweight might also be needed.
Don't those taller items fit around the sides? Next to the car.
Cindy Hamilton
+1
The primary advantage to higher doors would be to get a taller vehicle in or I guess for his storage, if you're not going to use it for vehicles.
He must live somewhere with nice weather. I don't relish the idea of scraping a foot of snow off my car.
Cindy Hamilton
What I did to use some of that space above the open doors was to build a "suspended" floor. Hanging from the rafters and joists. It did allow for some taller items to be stored between the "floor" and the roof.
Or if the garage doubles as a workshop and you're swinging around
8' boards regularly. 9 or 10' ceilings are quite nice for that.
Yes and no. The door width to the rails is much wider than a car so those hanging rails effectively "reserve" a lot more space than the car actually needs, and with the door open or closed those rails are always hanging there at the 7ft level. That can get in the way when you are simply carrying something like a ladder or a sheet of plywood. Then you realize that they ~could~ have run the rails up much closer to the the actual ceiling for probably the same cost.
It is an interesting question. All the garage doors I;ve seen, the door is parallel to the floor when raised. So, the std solution would be to get a taller garage door. The solution I haven't seen would be to have the door go uphill as it goes into the garage, which would give you gradually more space as you move away from the opening. I guess you could go ask some local garage door companies about that. Seems the essential element would be a non 90 deg track piece at the two corners.
That was my thinking, unless he doesn't park in the garage and it is just a shop/storage space.
I suppose you could find some garage door track and extend the legs at the top where it meets the curve then raise the horizontal but you might have trouble balancing the door since stock springs are designed to have all of the load off in 7-8 feet when the door is laying flat on the top rails and you will still have a couple feet in the vertical.
I built shelving above the garage door rails - on each side of the garage-door-opener track . 2 x 4 s and pine barnboard ; lag bolts into wall & ceiling studs. Step-ladder for access but it's great seasonal storage - totes of Christmas & Halloween decorations ; snow shovels ; camping / boating gear ; etc John T.
As someone in the inspector biz, some of these things scare me a little. Your normal roof truss bottom chord is usually only rated for
2 PSF, just enough to carry the drywall and maybe a light fixture or two. I have seen things hanging from or on top of these chords that far exceed the rated capacity. That might really become an issue in a garage where the door is already stressing that structure and there are no partition walls to distribute the load. Back in the olden days when a garage door was a wooden panel thing or even fiberglass they were not that heavy but my 18', 150 MPH wind code door weighs around 800-1000 pounds. There are 4 panels that weigh over 200# each.
So far so good ... it was the first thing I did when I moved here - 25 + years ago. Not even a tiny drywall crack yet. John T.
Well, my townhouse, not a garage, but before I understood that trusses are not meant to support attic floors, I put in an attic floor, in the middle third of the attic (4x8 sheets cut lengthwise into thirds, the largest pieces that would go through the hatch door into the attic. Later someone gave me a stack of 2x2' boards that I spread around also). I used it mostly when putting in wiring, and what I've been storing has been very light for the most part, but I and one other person has been up there for many hours and he weighs 250 lbs.
I haven't had any trouble. There's a wrinkle where two sheets of ceiling above the rear bedroom are taped, but I think that's the rear third, not a part of the attic where anyone stands
Thank the engineer that overbuilt the trusses I guess but drywall doesn't really crack that easy from bowing. It is surface displacement that pulls cracks in it. Putting a laser on the ceiling might show you some bowing you did not know was there.
The rails include the door track and they gradually bend 90^ right at the top of the door. You'd have to find or make some rails that bend
45^ and go up the other 2 feet, then bend 45^ again to be horizontal. If they make 45^ bends, it would be about the same cost, but if they don't, someone has to make them. Maybe you can make them by cutting 90^ bends in half.
Why do you need two 45s? You have to increase the height of the vertical, make the same 90 bend, and just not pull it back as far on the horizontal. Same travel distance, different route.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.