Garage door Header framing, Crazy idea????

[OKnewguy]

Yes, the existing doors are 7, this garage was built in the early 80's, I do not know why they went with the smaller doors. The new door opening will be 16' on the money. I have heard from a friend, that some of the double garage doors are now 15' 11.5" if this is the case, then I will add some trip to make up the difference.
Thanks, Dave

 

[valley]

post withdrawn.

 

[CurlyDave]

Gable trusses are usualy built to be placed on a weight bearing wall, and are not designed to hold any weight without being supported from underneath. Look in your attic to see if the gable truss looks exactly like the rest of your trusses. If not, you need to support that truss along with the gable. I build custom homes up to about 7500 sq. ft. I doubt if you will be able to frame any kind of header to span 16 feet that won't sag a little bit. Call a local truss supplier, they usually supply LVL material, glulam, paralam type beams, too. They will tell you what size beam to use, and they can supply it. Hope this helps.

I have to agree with this. I am currently building a new garage and the end trusses are designed to go on a weight bearing wall.

My header is 4x14" for a 16' door.

You have plenty of room to take out the cripples above the current header and put in a bigger header. The cost of the correct header is peanuts compared to the cost of a good garage door.

My (very current) experience is that there is a break point at 16' for garage doors, go even one inch over and the cost is maybe 20% higher.

 

[ray66v]

I hate saggy headers, and even though there is no load on this span, there is still a possibility of it sagging from it's own weight. For that reason I never put anything above a garage door, except a steel reinforced header.

From here, it looks to me like you could remove the old headers and put in a new one from the inside, without too much of a fight.

It may be more work in the end, to try and short cut it.

 

[slowzuki]

Waste of money to put a steel header above the door, and you then have the problem of attaching wood to the steel header to mount your garage door hardware.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Attached photo of header on my shop that is for a 16 foot door. I have an 18 foot door on my home garage that is built similar. This photo shows an 8 foot tall door with 9'8" ceiling height to give you an idea of the size of the header. Plywood is attached on each side also and a roof truss is above this. I dont know if they are all tied together but this should give you a good idea of how to build.

 

[ray66v]

Waste of money to put a steel header above the door, and you then have the problem of attaching wood to the steel header to mount your garage door hardware.

a. It's not a waste of money, if you don't want it to sag.

b. If you sandwich a steel flitch plate between (2) 2x10's, you have wood on both sides, to attach anything you desire.

 

[lostcause]

a. It's not a waste of money, if you don't want it to sag.

b. If you sandwich a steel flitch plate between (2) 2x10's, you have wood on both sides, to attach anything you desire.

you truly don't need steel in order to not have it sag. maybe 30-40 years ago things would have been different, but today we've got lots of engineered lumber products that will do nearly anything that steel will do. as was mentioned earlier, an lvl (laminated veneer lumber) solution would be the easiest to do. you could probably get by with just sandwiching your current headers as you suggested, but replacing with lvls would be ideal. a couple of years ago i remodeled a 2 car garage into a workshop. here's a few pictures relating to the changing of the doors:

Here's the garage as it was built, probably 10+ years prior. All in good shape, but not really suited for my needs.

as you can see, the gable end has virtually no load on it. i did not have a continuous header, but in stead two separate headers supported by the studs between the doors. you can see that the whole front of the building is just hanging even without the center post supporting it. the plywood sheathing is what does the work here. it braces and supports the front wall. the 2x6 nailed across the front is just to keep things loosely tied together so that a freak wind storm wouldn't rip the unsupported doors apart. to dispel any questions of sagging and load on the gable end: after jacking the building, i ran a string across the front of the building. there was only 1/4" of sag at the center of the wall BEFORE i tied them together with the continuous 2x6, and that's with everything just hanging, and absolutely no header.

here i've removed the doors and replaced the header. i believe i used a pair of 1 3/4x 11 3/4 lvls glued and nailed together, but it's been a while, so they might be deeper, but i really don't think so.

here it's all together and mostly finished off. it's been like this for two years now, and still just as level as the day i put it in. incidentally, i'm not a contractor - just a motivated homeowner. i have a wide array of tools, but i didn't do anything here that required more than a hammer, circular saw, and sawzall. i did tear the gearbox out of a sawzall cutting the building off the sills, but there's always some casualties in a project this size.

for reference, the door is an 8x18, and i wish i could remember the price of the headers. i bought 20 footers to give me room to plan everything out, and i think it was around $80 each, so $160 total, give or take. a piece of 1/4x12 steel flat bar would have cost about exactly the same per foot as the lvls i used, but then you'd still need the dimensional lumber to sandwich it with, plus a lot of carriage bolts, and a lot of hole drilling. if you are considering steel for a center beam, then i can see it being viable, since it can also do double duty as a crane hoist beam. as far as i'm concerned, it's excess weight that serves no purpose in a header.

 

[ray66v]

Sure, you can use a LVL beam, which are not cheap. And if you do it right, that can work fine.

I don't know how the cost would come out, I'm not sure there would be a big difference. You could use the a 1/4 inch flitch plate here, (not a pricey one).

For now, I will stick with what I know works.

 

[chucko]

There is "some" load on that header. Notice the pic of the outside the roof slopes up to that gable that rest on the header. The gable holds all of this and even two foot of roof load behind it. The weight of all of that and the self weight of that gable must be accounted for.

Does that gable sit right above the header or is it back from it a few feet?