Barndominium/Shop or "real" House?

[WinterDeere]

I see that your overhead door track follows the slope of roof trusses. Was it a problem to have it installed that way? Do you know if there are limitation on what the slope can be? I would like to do something similar on a steel frame building where the slope is 5:12. Yours looks less steep, at least on the inside.

My barn has a roof pitch above 10:12, and the prior owner had the doors track that way. I re-tracked them horizontally when I added a second floor, but they worked fine previously.

Door spring was torsion type, and doors were old-school vertical planked type with horizontal cleats, so they went up and down as a solid panel, not hinged sections. I guess that's one of the advantages of tracking like that, as a solid panel door might clip something on the way up/down, if tracked horizontally to a low ceiling.

 

[ETD66SS]

I see that your overhead door track follows the slope of roof trusses. Was it a problem to have it installed that way? Do you know if there are limitation on what the slope can be? I would like to do something similar on a steel frame building where the slope is 5:12. Yours looks less steep, at least on the inside.

The pitch of the ceiling is 1.5:12. There was no issues having the tracks installed that way. I'm not sure at what pitch it would become a problem if at all. I'm sure the spring/jackshaft components are different if a pitch is greater and the door weight has to be held up in the open position more than say horizontal tracks.

 

[WinterDeere]

The pitch of the ceiling is 1.5:12. There was no issues having the tracks installed that way. I'm not sure at what pitch it would become a problem if at all. I'm sure the spring/jackshaft components are different if a pitch is greater and the door weight has to be held up in the open position more than say horizontal tracks.

As noted, mine is 10:12, and it worked fine. But doors were very wide, I think 10' and 11', which allowed for longer than normal torsion springs.

The trouble you're going to run into, unless you have an electric opener, is spring tension. With a regular or short spring, you'll have trouble putting enough tension into it to keep the door fully open, without having tension so high when closed that the door wants to fly up when not latched down. Esp. if you're heating your garage or trying to keep mice out, you want that door to be under at least a little downward force when down.

Longer springs, whether torsion or extension, allow for a less disparate range of force between open and closed. If door is not very wide, best bet may be longer than standard extension springs, but replacing the usual 2:1 pulley setup with a 3:1 or 4:1 for less range. Of course this means increasing spring strength/force 1.5x or 2x, along with all of the associated fastenings.

 

[jigs_n_fixtures]

Since commercial installations of roll up doors exist with vertical tracks: I see no reason that the tracks won't work at any angle you want to put them at. You just need to work out the counterbalance issues. Garage door tracks go horizontal just to clear the garage ceiling, or bottoms of the trusses.