Looking for a garage door to replace to knackered hinged ones up at my mums place. Ive specced out the opening of the garage, there don't appear to be any problems... no internal roof structure to get in the way, plenty of clearance, etc etc. Garage is brick built so no probs "screwing into" stuff for fixings.
Never done it before and i'm bewilderd by the google... loads of the buggers.
Want to DIY, can anyone suggest any gooduns? Seen one in a wickes catalog, (p88 from 210 quid) will go and have a nose at it today, or am I wasting my time with that one? Also, are they really 2 man jobs or can they be fitted single-handedly?
What sort of house is it? If it is pre around 1960, I'd think that hinged doors were more appropriate.
I can't imagine that fitting a up and over door is a single person job. There may be single person elements in terms of preparing the mountings, though, before the heavy lifting starts.
We have up and over doors front and back of our garage - nice because you can get through the garage to the back patio.
Up and over doors require far less space outside the garage to operate, and only need the space directly in front of the door.
For a standard opening (where you don't need to use the space immediately above) they are a much more practical solution, and given the lightness and counterbalancing they are usually much easier to operate.
Side hung doors are better for high openings (e.g. when you want to get a caravan into the garage) but you do lose the space either side of the door opening which is needed to allow the doors to swing back and be fixed. Side hung doors are also much harder to automate (should you wish to do this).
I also think roller doors are a good space saving solution, but they can be a little expensive.
With regards to the original query - it is possibly a one person job because the firm that last repaired one of our doors by replacing the wires only sent one person.
If you know what you are doing you should be able to fit and remove the door (which is quite light for its size) and tension the spring mechanism on your own.
However it would be safer to have at least two people for the final fitting of the door in case of problems. The fitting of the door into the frame should not take long - less than an hour - so you won't need help for most of the job. Fitting the frame and spring mechanism should be fine for one person, although again it is probably safer with two.
The problem with having hinged doors is that the left one *always* gets caught by the wind and one of the jobs im always doing is repairing / rebuilding /replacing it. My mum is a 75yrs young 5 foot nothing human, and the left hand door gets whipped out of her hands unless there is someone there to open the doors, which cannot always be the case. It's not practical to put a post to "catch" the door either.
Was thinking along the lines of easier to open / close and maintain.
Ive upped a couple of pics:
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shows the existing doors, humbly crafted, but past its sell-by
2.jpg illustrates how things will look at the end of this summer... door colour will prolly be a wood colour type finish to match the rest of the front, but it was the first pic I could get to give mum an idea of the new look.
If it was for my mother, I'd factor in the cost of an automatic opener if I could afford one. (Ours, installed 4 years ago, cost about £350 to have done.) A wonderful invention.
(I *know* that one can manually open the door just fine, and openers are unnecessary frivolities, but prior to installing the opener I tended to leave the car in the drive more often than not. With it, I store the car in the garage, and it seems happier in there...)
sectional (4 sections) door a few yrs ago. They're very widely used in the USA (every Villa I've stayed a in Florida has had one, but uninsulated with polystyrene which ours came with) and they have an outlet in Stockport, but I got mine from B&Q Warehouse for £250. It slides back on tracks so make sure you have the height clearance required (something like 18 inches? but may be less). It solves all of the problems you mentioned - the springs can be tensioned so there's no effort required to open the door but in fact I bought an opener from Screwfix for £160 ish. When it's closed it looks just like the door in you picture. It slides open on the tracks so doesn't stick out like an up & over door. It's an easy single person fit (but takes a fair bit of time - you have to build the sections together). I'm very slow and it took me a weekend to do the whole thing inc opener). However I spent ages messing around with glue-in (to the brick) studs for the vertical track which were probably totally un-necessary. There's a neat trim you can get to line the opening which the door fits snug against, whcih seemed dear for what it was (£30?) but the door (and my fitting of it!) are altogether a quality item (IMHO) even regardless of the fairly low price.
Maybe it's not your fault (as Phoebe said about Smelly Cat)...
I've heard about them-there garages in new housing developments that are so small you might drive a small car into them, but you'll have to crawl out the sun roof since you can't open the car doors....
I replaced hinged doors with an up-and-over door about 25 years ago - and did it largely on my own, with a bit of help from my wife at the strategic points. I have recently taken it off to repaint it (so I could lay it out flat to avoid runs) and again had no problems removing and refitting it.
The are several different mechanisms - so you need to be aware of these and choose the best type for your purposes. Some require high level horizontal tracks inside the garage, such that the whole door disappears inside the garage when open. Others (like mine) are supported entirely by cantilever mechanisms bolted to the side members of the doorframe - and are half in and half out when open. These are probably the easiest to fit, and to tension the springs.
If you currently have hinged doors, the frame is presumably rebated - whereas an up and over door requires a plain frame. Are you planning to replace the frame? I kept my original frames, and filled the rebates with strips of wood - finishing off with lengths of skirting board on the front to hide the joint and the fixings. The downside of this was that the opening was then slightly narrower than a standard size - so I had to have a custom size door made, which cost a few bob extra. I could probably take and post some photos of the relevant features if this would help.
Freeads, bought several that way, new "doesn't suit our style" ones and good secondhand from garage to room conversions. Oh and yes I did install some of them single handed, a second set of hands helps though!
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