Garage High Lift

[paulhastings]

Does anyone have a suggestions or a referral for a southern California garage door company to raise the tracks and opener to fit a four post lift. Preferrably a company that is familiar with this type of application. I certainly don't want that door to come crashing down because it has the wrong springs or something.

[Phoenix SRT]

Wayne-Dalton brand has a lift that mounts on the header right above the door, but they say that the device is not made for vertical lifts over 8'. That means that you can't put the tracks up against the ceiling and use the WD lift.

LiftMaster has a similar unit, I think. I was at a home show a couple of weeks ago and talked to a LM dealer who told me about the unit. He didn't have one on display at his booth, though. Call your local LM dealer and/or check the web. The dealer said the unit, which also mounts on the header above the door (presumably right up near the ceiling where the door tracks curve from vertical to horizontal), can be used to lift the door to any height.

[JonL]

Perhaps not the solution you're looking for, but here's what I did with my garage. I have 2 bays with roughly 45 degree track using a regular belt-drive lift. Wayne-Dalton robbed me to do the 1st bay, the 2nd bay only cost a couple of hundred to re-do the tracks

When I was doing research a couple of years ago looking for a door that would essentially go straight up and then take a 90 degree turn and go along the ceiling, I was told that there was no standard residential door that would do that, that I would have to go to a commercial door. Hence the result:

I also have the units that Phoenix SRT is referring to. For a different garage bay we recently got the LiftMaster unit (Residential Jackshaft Opener -3800) to replace our Wayne-Dalton iDrive unit. DO NOT waste your money on the iDrive. We had that unit for 3 years and the service guys were at our home about every 2-3 months making adjustments, replacing the mother board, replacing the spring, etc, etc. We finally replaced it with the LiftMaster jackshaft and have had that for about 6 months and the thing works like it is supposed to. Imagine that.

[Phoenix SRT]

Jon,

I'm building a new house and am giving careful consideration to the garage. You seem to have experience with some of the products I'm looking at, so I have some questions.

Why do you have the 45 degree tracks when you have either the WD I-drive or the LM equivilents? I thought the whole purpose of those units, which mount above the door on the wall (rather in the middle of ceiling back where the tracks end) was so that you could run the tracks all the way to the ceiling and thereby loose only a few inches of ceiling height with the door open.

The 45 degree set up will gain you some height clearance as you get away from the door, but you still loose the same amount of clearance as you get closer to the door as you would with a standard door/opener set up. The 45 degree arrangements also still lose substantial ceiling clearance even at the back of the tracks because they are not mounted right up against the ceiling. The standard opener hangs down, as well, also causing loss of clearance.

[JonL]

Phoenix,

You are correct about the loss of clearance. My garage in the picture is big enough to absorb that (as it has 12 ft ceilings and is 30 ft deep) as you can see the blue towers in the pic next to the boat is my 2-post lift.

I originally wanted the garage door to open like you describe but was told the doors would have to be more flexible to be able to do that. In otherwods, in order for the door to pull up and away from the door opening header and then hug the wall until it came up to the ceiling. I was told (again by the Wayne-Dalton morons) that I would have to use a commercial roll-up door to be able to have it do that. I still think that is incorrect info as I think I've seen pics of other people's garages with the tracks running as you describe.

Neither of the bays that are in the pic have the LM Jackshaft opener, it's in our other bay which has limited ceiling clearance (original garage, home built in 1926).

The other thing to consider is the Jackshaft opener is significantly more $$ than the std openers.

Hope that helps.