doorway for a forklift

Randy fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Custom-sized doors are only a few tens of bucks more than standards, so long as you don't mind the three-or-so week wait.

We use 3'6" (standard height) doors in our factory, so people can carry 32" wide product trays through without banging the jambs. They cost about $50 more (size-for-size) than a standard door would.

LLoyd

A door that just fits in eight foot studs is almost as standard. I got double ones so that i just use one as the walk door and open the other for forklift passage. You may have to wait a couple days for delivery, but price is about the same.

Karl

The standard steel firedoors are available in all sorts of sizes. Our lab area has 36"x 78" doors, double 36x78" with no mullion, double

36x78" with the divider mullion, double 42"x84" with no divider, and a monster 42"x96" double with no divider. I've seen 48" widths as well.

The new price on these is horrible. I don't have current prices but I'd expect numbers well above $1000 for a double door setup. They are sometimes available at one of the used/seconds building materials places for much more reasonable prices. I have several places locally (Minnesota) that stock them used.

If you buy used, you should know that the door AND the frame are considered one unit as far as meeting fire code. For hobbyist level or small commercial where the door is not used as a fire block, this is not an issue.

You might be > I'm still working on the neverending project of moving my stock rack

I'd suggest (assuming you have the vertical on the building) an insulated (since you are going between heated and non-heated) garage-type door - IIRC the Overhead Door folks (and presumably most others) were entirely happy to cut one to whatever size I liked - and I think you will want more height, if you are ever going to run the forklift through the door with a load on.

As for cutting a door or two in a brick wall, just make sure you engineer that job so you still have a wall when you are done...

Y'know... after thinking this over, I've come to the conclusion what you really need to do is build a door; a rolling (top-track) barn- style door.

You can open it exactly as far as you need to for ingress/egress, it'll be open for the entire height floor-to-top plate, and the hardware is less expensive than a suitable door would be.

LLoyd

I've never seen a door like that with any type of seals or insulation. Would be cheap to make though....

Thank You, Randy

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You don't, by chance, have a Habitat for Humanity surplus retail outlet or some other architectural salvage store near you ? I often see oversize doors, complete with really heavy-duty hardware, from remodeled medical and commercial/industrial facilities at such places near me in western NC and upstate SC.

David Merrill

Randy fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

insulation.

All the time, are they made with seals and insulation.

The secret to getting them to seal well is to use lip or welt seals, and cause the door to 'jam' into a ramp-type closer at the end of its roll.

The edge of the door is simply squeezed shut in the last 1/2" or so of travel. The top gasket is always pressed snug against a wear strip (so it doesn't scrub off the gasket.

Insulating them is as simple as making the door like a wall panel, and stuffing it.

(we use them on our chemical storage sheds, which must be climate controlled)

I've seen another such door that didn't use the 'squeeze' method. It had ledges all-round, and simply butted up against welt seals.

LLoyd

Vertical sectional garage door for a house - and they can easily add an extra panel to make it taller, and supply a torsion spring and snail drum that will handle the taller door. Available insulated and weatherstripped, and/or with a window panel.

And you can use a box stock electric garage door opener on it, too - just hit the button from the comfort of the forklift seat... But you need to get one that has a longer screw or chain to handle the longer travel. Most electric openers have extension kits available for a nominal charge.

Don't forget to header off the wall before cutting the hole for the door - and at a minimum it really should be professionally engineered by an architect - you don't want anyone getting killed by pieces of falling wall.

The ugly way is to build a permanent steel frame that is bolted to the inside of the wall and then the doorway cut out. They do that all the time on "tilt-up" concrete industrial buildings.

The slick way is to make the temporary frame to support the wall while you work, cut an oversized hole, then build a permanent steel frame inside the opening that has the proper steel header beam and king posts. Then you can take off the temporary and it looks like it was built that way.

(You might have to dig and pour post footers at each end if there's enough concentrated load there, especially if you have sandy or poorly compacted or expansive soil under the building. You could make the mod and a few months later the building starts falling apart... That's one of the reasons why you really need an architect to at least look it over.)

Or you can make the temporary support and oversized hole, then put in a precast concrete header beam camouflaged with face brick, and redo all the brickwork to add tied-in masonry kingposts on each side. But now you're getting into 'gilding the lily' territory.

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Even after I cut an 8 foot hole in the wall there will still be 5 foot of wall over the top. Very little load on top, I can move the stuff on the second floor out of the way. In the past I cut a hole and took out bricks to form an arch over the hole, install door frame, fill with concrete, then brick up the hole over the top. There is no engineering in this building now. It's a 110 year old stable that was part of a brewery. I think lots of beer was consumed in the contruction. The mortar for the most part is lime and sand with little to no portland. I'm told that was standard practice back then. I do have 24" I-beams holding up the second floor though. Not orginal, you can see differances in the motar, looks like they were slid in through the wall at some point.

Picture of ceiling beams

I had to turn off the lights for the picture to get.

Thank You, Randy

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I do have a place called the RE-PLACE, it's run by the Good Shepard Rehabilitation Hospital, I'll have to look there. Thanks for the reminder.

Thank You, Randy

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Perhaps you could extend the steel door frame sides upward to 8' with channel iron, install the door normally, and make a horizontally hinged wooden hatch that fills the top opening.

jw

Are you putting this door through the rear wall in this photo, or the side wall?

For the side wall you already have most of the structure you need in place, you could just bridge between the 24" beams with a chunk of C beam flat side to the wall, and then through-bolt the wall to it - big squaire washers or a second chunk of beam on the outside as clamping. Just moving the stuff isn't enough, you have to actively hold up the building itself.

You need some sort of temporary support, so you can get the keystone arch or other header in before the wall sags or collapses.

Concrete is strong when it's in compression, but very fragile when it is in tension. You could cut out a square doorway hole in the wall and then end up with a roughly triangular arch as the structure falls into the gap. And if one of the main roof rafters is above that instant hole, you could lose the whole place as the roof comes apart.

The building might well have been built in the 19th or early part of the 20th Century, when "That's how we do it" was the rule of the day.

But when you change things in the 21st Century you need to Cover Your Ass and get engineering help, or the first time something goes wrong said ass is going to be flapping in the breeze and potentially painfully exposed.

An individual gets hurt or killed - and even if they have insurance to pay for the hospitalization, said insurance company will soon be coming after you to recover what they paid out.

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Bruce, not that wall. this wall

compressor will move over to the right, center of door will be about where the pipe comes down to the compressor now. At the top of the wall are the joists for the second floor. Can't really see them with the drywall and the plywood over the ends. Cabniet and tool box will need to move on the other side.

After 15 years of climbing a ladder to the second floor I built these stairs. should have done that sooner.

Thank You, Randy

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That zig-zag crack over the old walled-off doorway is a bad sign - they didn't suupport it right while building the header or shim under the header when they were done. It has sagged a bit, and the mortar is starting to come apart. The side with the compressor has a brick veneer to hide, but the backside you can see the wood header beam.

And I simply /love/ the Flammable Storage locker right under the gas radiant heater (spelled 'Ignition Source'), that's a nice touch. (Do you use a match when reading the labels in there?)

Might want to move those two a *bit* farther away from each other...

Looks to me like it would be a Whole Lot Easier to slide the staircase over to one side and reposition the attic opening - plus you don't want the header beams supporting the stairs dumping the 2nd floor and stairway load over the doorway. You want as little load on the header as possible.

IANA Architect, but I even know that much.

Then reopen the old doorway. It's already there, and you can see that the header needs rework, so you don't need to make a new trouble spot. It can easily get a bit taller or wider to fit whatever used or inexpensive door you find.

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