Something New in Garage Doors | Hacker News Reader

Something New in Garage Doors

davintosh.com

69 pointscek56 comments

"The biggest difference between this system and a traditional garage door is that you don’t have the track rails extending into the garage space, and that only half the height of the door ends up above the open doorway"

= Oops better look for another USP, because this alternative ingenious solution has been around for years:

https://www.factoryfast.com.au/p/automatic-garage-roller-doo...

Half the height of the door... that's actually kind of a lot? My garage door does have tracks into the garage, but there is only about 10 inches from top of the doorway to the ceiling.

Did you watch the video?

The comment about half the height of the door was in reference to how far the folded panels extend HORIZONTALLY into the garage. The folding process never goes above the top of the mechanism which looks to be less than 10 inches above the top of the door.

Watch the video - the door rotates 90 degrees (like a normal garage door), so it's half the height of the door rotated into depth.

I think part of what they are shooting for, at least from the video, is the 'elegance' factor. It's two flat panels with very little detail in them. The roll-up is a bunch of slat and looks much more busy.

True, although I am also thinking the only advantage of the half height is if you have a garage not big enough for a car. So this is for people who want an elegant looking small garage. Some houses do come with small garages where the space has been reclaimed for living space, but most garages could fit a regular system.

You'll be waking up half the neighborhood with those unless you pack them with so much grease some of it escapes around the tracks, making the whole thing ugly.

It should open outward, not inward. Then, it takes up zero space internally, and even provides a sun-shade awning when opened.

I think that would make it be more prone to accidental damage

Great idea if you live in a sunny, temperate climate.

Not so good the first time you try to open the door somewhere snowy.

Can you explain the specific problem? Would snow have to be near the top of the door in your scenario?

Sure, the motor powering the door will not be able to overcome the resistance of even a few inches of snow outside. Think of the bottom edge of the door as the tip of a lever's long side. It is the opposite of what you want when using a lever. The long side is for applying power and the short side gives you the extra torque you need.

Put more simply, the door won't be able to push snowdrifts out of the way if it has to swing outward to open. Your 4x4 with snow tires will remain stuck inside the garage, unable to exit.

EDIT - After re-reading the question I now realise the comment above was about modifying this particular design to open outward at the top, and I was (incorrectly) assuming it was about a traditional outward-opening door like you might see in southern California. Sorry for the confusion. That may still be problematic, but not for the reasons I gave here.

You still have a potential issue if you leave the door open during a heavy snowfall. Forgetting to shut the door for a few hours could cause some damage if done at the wrong time.

This would reduce the clearance at the top of the door by at least the thickness of the two door panels. If you look at a traditional door its tracks allow the full use of the height under the header which is especially important for trucks or cars with ski racks which require this clearance.

It actually reminds me of those cable folding doors (http://www.bifold.com/note.php) which have been around for a while. They aren't usually used on garage doors though, more for airplane hangers and pole sheds.

I guess I'm not seeing the benefits for the extra complexity.

Looks like it'd be a real pain in the ass to open when the motor fails.

Having worked in a warehouse building with massive roll-up doors that had electric motors I would imagine these doors have a backup that uses a reduction gear to make manual operation simple yet slow.

Not to mention maintainability.

I've been too lazy to grease/oil my powered "conventional" garage doors, either the lifting mechanism or the side rails, but they are still working after 15 years of use. I agree with your maintainability concern with this mechanism.

The springs of most conventional garage doors are a hazard to life (if you have a two-story bldg) and property. When the garage door is down, those suckers are cocked like a pistol with the weight of said door. And when one or more fails spontaneously, they will follow Newton's third law and shoot upwards into whatever or whomever happens to be there, with metal shrapnel going in either direction. I've had to repair a garage ceiling and replace all of those springs (once one spring goes, all of them should be changed.)

You are talking about extension springs? In my experiance torsion springs break very harmlessly. They just snap and unwind but stay on the shaft. Torsion springs are the only kind I have myself seen used for garage doors.

No, you had something entirely different so don't try to trivialize something you don't know anything about. Ours fired through the ceiling of the garage and gouged the underside of the roof sheeting because of how the door and springs was engineered. It went off like a slingshot and sent metal fragments upwards at high velocity. Also, they looked like they were from the early 1970's and the springs separated completely as a result of metal fatigue into 3 segments plus some other bits of shrapnel here and there.

> don't try to trivialize something you don't know anything about

I think you misread his comment. He wasn't talking about the same kind of spring you are.

Extensions springs are the old way. Common for a few decades at least. Torsion springs are the new way. They're safer, and smaller, and require less maintenance.

Unfortunately, they're also a bit more fragile. Speculation (mine) is that the metallurgy required to make a big torsion spring makes the material more brittle than standard spring steel. Or maybe they're just thinner and cheaper.

They sure are loud when they snap though.

Loud, yes. Extension springs are still found on single-piece doors.

Single piece doors aren't legal in many states, but interestingly it's not because of the safety issues (which are much greater than tracked folding doors with extension springs, due to the angle of extension).

I've never even seen them outside of California.

I was interested by this but couldn't find anything about single piece doors being illegal. Being from California I've lived in a few places where these types of doors are common.

> Single piece doors aren't legal in many states, ...

Sorry, I phrased that poorly.

There are many states where the typical California tilt-up single-piece door with levered extension springs does not meet code.

Apparently they are not secure in very high winds, so they're especially dangerous in hurricane/tornado country.

Ahhh that makes perfect sense. Thanks for the explanation.

Building codes require those springs to be retained by steel cables. Might vary by state. Cheap soln though.

If there were such a thing, it had fatigued and/or rusted to such a degree that it clearly failed to contain sufficiency energy because a ceiling tile had to be replaced and the ceiling above that had to be patched. (Cheap rental house with ancient crap.) Don't rely on safety properties as a first-line defense, they are a fail-safe, and sometimes they just don't work.

Building code changes usually aren't applied to existing structures. Retaining cables were not a requirement in the early days.

Sometimes code changes are applied at the time of sale -- either by law, by the buyer as a condition of sale, or by a lender as a condition of loan.

Pretty sure retaining cables fall into the first (by law) category, for the safety reasons you mention. It's definitely something that building inspectors look for.

But yeah, rental property is infrequently sold and almost never managed proactively.

California municipalities will come looking for property owners who fail to perform seismic retrofits, but I've never heard of anyone hunting down retaining cable scofflaws.

It's only when someone gets killed from something is anything done and then it's quickly forgotten back to the regular pattern.

Those doors would need a ton of space between the vehicle and the door though.

They fold outwards, and would require less room anywhere inside the garage, Han the op version.

I think he means a vehicle parked in front of the garage door.

Well, the video I saw at the link provided showed the doors opening inward. If they normally open outwards then it obviously wouldn't have any additional clearance requirement on the inside of the garage.

EDIT: I stand corrected. I went back and looked at the image (not video) I saw before. It was deceiving due to the layout but it was folding to the exterior. http://www.bifold.com/assets/slider-37.jpg

Some of these designed wouldn't work in places like San Francisco if you own a vehicle that just barely fits into said garage. The entire interior/exterior operating clearance would need to be available and measured carefully.

There are lots of expensive, exotic garage doors. There's even a web site for garage design:

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=197602

Vertical bifold doors are common for airplane hangars.

Neat. Seems some folks have their hangar setup as an upscale loft as well. (Apart from "ranch" homes that share a common landing strip.)

a little pricey! http://www.accessgaragedoors.com/pdf/dominagaragedoors/domin... (in Euros)

I don't see the price!

Look at page 8 onwards.

€ 3850 to € 7400

Think they would ship to the US? (Unless there are fire/safety/code regulations regarding garage doors.)

It looks like there would be a lot of stress holding the doors up. I can only see the arm on the side, and at that angle it looks like it would not be very strong. I wonder about the longevity. But they do look cool!

Watching the video you can clearly see the upper panel has support arms on both sides.

Also, it's basically cantilevered when retracted and should be pretty solid.

Doesn't work well for trucks or vans in shallow garages, where the rear of the vehicle ends up very close to the door.

From looking at the video it seems like a full-size van would only need about 18 inches of clearance between the door and the van. Maybe 24 at the outside.

Unrelated but just wanted to thank the article writers for including a regular link to YouTube in addition to the embed. I have flash set to not automatically run on all websites but I do have it set to work in YouTube and Vimeo (among others). A link is very nice and appreciated.

That is pretty sweet. My favorite 'weird' garage door idea though is the one that goes down into the ground. Basically a vertical slab with a very long scissor drive to lift up the door. The down side being maintenance of course, need to clean out all the crap that accumulates 12' below the ground.

Mechanical engineering is black magic.

For the software types here yeah, it is.

But THIS is black magic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umfvm8I9_oU

Hinge on one side. Piano hinges on the parts that fold. Math to calculate the correct angles. Didn't seem like voodoo to me.

This is the one that really looks like magic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10y28PD73vk

That one probably has tracks inside that move each piece through its path as the table rotates.

How the table is made. The details are beautiful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVbo7ycpkeI

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