Raising the Garage Door

how about a garage door opener?

This ancient garage is one good windstorm away from falling to the ground. No electricity out there and i am not going to spend one more moment or thin dime than necessary on the old thing.

how about a counterweight then.

Ok, that's it...you're banned for life from this NG. That just ISN'T the way people here think and we don't want you corrupting them!

now what a perfectly good reason to build a new 30x 60 heated and cooled garage for the wife's well being , and to be courteous you could set up shop in the part unused by her auto so that you're sure to be around to help carry anything she should bring home

Ignoramus21310 wrote in news:d6bbed$hab$ snipped-for-privacy@pita.alt.net:

You've never been to Ct. or the rest of New England have you? I was born and raised there. It's called Yankee Ingenuity. It's what helped make America great. Of course now that I live in the Midwest, I can see this sort of thing for what it really is, cheapness!!

Otoh, it's pretty expensive to live in Ct. They are not shy with the taxes and the housing prices are pretty salty too.

A more rugged and rudimentary idea would be a counterweight on the other side of the garage, with the cable taking two turns through two blocks.

Ignoramus21310 wrote in news:d6bo2m$jqd$ snipped-for-privacy@pita.alt.net:

There ought to be springs and cables or a wound spring to do just that. They get old and stretched out after a while. I had one let go at an older house I used to own. They can do some damage.

Errol's garage sounds like my fathers. We ended up drilling holes in the sides and used a come-along to pull the sides back together. This took the better part of a year or so.

The garage was built from packing crates and skids from Scovill mfg. co. and was quite old. Anyway once we got the sides pulled back in we put new trusses up to hold it together.

Then we jacked it up and replaced the sills then set it down on cinder blocks. Some years after that we put on a new roof deck and shingled it. Oh, yeah we fixed the side door and the windows too. They had gotten crushed from the slow assault of gravity and the elements.

Good to go for another 50 years or so. Most people would have torn it down and started over. Not a true Yankee though. All in all I'd be surprised if we spent 50 bucks fixing it outside of the roof. The old man couldn't scrounge up the plywood and shingles and finally broke down and bought them.

On Mon, 16 May 2005 21:06:53 -0500, the inscrutable "williamhenry" spake:

Hey, have Conroy's wife do it for you.

Oops, I thought that said "razing" the garage door. My bad.

Oops, that thread was on the Wreck, not here.

------ We're born hungry, wet, 'n naked, and it gets worse from there. -

So you park your car inside so that the car is damaged when the building falls in on it? sounds like a good reason to part outside!

I hope the door is counterweighted or countersprung. If a boat winch gets away from you while under load, the spinning crank handle can break bones. ( In my case it was a finger that required several pins to reassemble)

That's two reasons that the "old fashioned" counterweight is better than a spring: Does not weaken, not very exciting if the cable breaks (thud). Of course "no-one" does it "that way" today...

If you have extension springs, you should have safety wires, which keep the parts from flying very far when they let go, unless they are very small parts (less than a full turn). Just a hunk of cable going down the middle of the spring, attached to something at both ends, long enough to let the spring stretch. The shaft on a torsion spring does the same thing. Don't be under the door when they let go...

In article , Ecnerwal wrote: : :That's two reasons that the "old fashioned" counterweight is better than :a spring: Does not weaken, not very exciting if the cable breaks (thud). :Of course "no-one" does it "that way" today...

Cleverest counterbalance I ever saw was a bundle of fairly heavy chain hanging from the end of a cable. As the door went up, the chain piled up in a bin on the floor. The free hanging part of the chain tracked the weight of the vertical portion of the door, with the closed door just a bit heavier than the chain and the remaining chain just a bit heavier than the rolled-up door.

Ecnerwal wrote in news:LawrenceSMITH- snipped-for-privacy@news.verizon.net:

I should have mentioned the safety cables. I installed them when I replaced the springs. There were two cars in the garage when the spring let go. Somehow neither one got hit. We were in the family room and the noise was loud enough to make you jump.

One thing I have found over myyears as an engineer. Gravity is always reliable