Garage Carriage Doors

Background -

October 2004 - Having struggled with an inexpensive roll-up garage door on our 1.5 car garage, for some 20+ years, trying to keep summer heat and humidity and winter cold out of the garage and provide a better environment for using the garage for my projects, as well as protecting my classic automobile, I gave up trying to "insulate" the wooden roll up door and use something different.

My first approach was, of course, to purchase a wooden carriage door system, which would replace the current roll up door and actually make the garage look like the original garage in the 1930's, which had carriage doors. Good luck! Most new "carriage doors" are actually roll up doors, made to look like carriage doors. Such things still have big problems in the way that they don't seal well at their perimeter and protect against the environment getting in. In fact, here is a recent article that addresses this very problem and also the difficulty of simply trying to compare garage door performance, like you would if buying replacement windows.

Bottom line is that I decided to build my own, since it's pretty straight forward for such a common "one car" door opening. Right?

The frame is a simple 2x3 lumber frame with hinge blocks. Everything is Poly glued and screwed together, to resist racking and sag. Not shown is the galvanized metal strap that runs diagonally from the top hinge side of the doors to the bottom outside edge, where the doors meet when closed. The strap is behind the cedar boards sitting in lightly notched areas of the 2x3 frame, where it passes over them. The surface is 1x6 cedar tonge and groove, face nailed to the frame.

Nice fresh cedar panels, with a couple of coats of Cabot clear finish. The look is a bit too plain, as we later make up some fake windows to give the doors a more pleasing, older style look, shown below. But first, I have to concentrate on sealing the door against the elements, which will be fairly easy since the doors can be weather stripped just like any outward opening exterior door.

Update March 14, 2011 -

(additional info about the lighting, requested by recent multiple Emails)

We've left the inside foil faced panels unfinished, as their reflective surface helps reflect the heat back into the garage. The overhead lamps are now simple 8-inch aluminum reflectors (6 each) off of inexpensive clamp-on lamps (as shown below), using 23 watt 3000K CFL lamps on surface mounted sockets. The earlier CFL lighting arrangement was simply a group of four CFLs on two "Y" adapter sockets, as can be seen in the above picture. They replaced 75 watt tungsten lamps, Very inefficient and no longer used. The type of 240 volt electric heater seen on the floor, is noted below further down this page.

The lamps are mounted on 1x3 inch 8 foot poplar wood, using surface mount standard size AC sockets, wired in parallel, as shown below. Make sure you observe correct socket polarization, with the white neutral wire attached to the socket shell connection (silver screw) and the black hot wire attached to the center socket connection (brass screw). The lamps produce a superior amount of illumination coverage, using just 138 watts of energy, compared to using six 75 watt tungsten lamps at 450 watts!

One of the bigger reasons for replacing the door, was the original door frame construction consisted of two 2x4 untreated pieces going down through the concrete floor right into the earth below, at each corner of the frame. Yup, termites were having a feast. You can see we replaced the 2x4s with treated 4x4s that now sit in a concrete pocket and not on the dirt and 2x4s that sit on top of the 18-inch foundation wall, at each side of the vertical framing.

The 1x2 poplar is glued and screwed to the side and top frame members and serve as the door stops which the 3M V-Seal is attached to, providing a very tight seal when the doors are closed against the V-Seal. The V-Seal is attached to the door stops with the open end of the V facing toward the outside. If wind blows against the door, it causes the V to expand and seal tighter. I've tried a number of synthetic rubber type seals, but they don't return to their original thickness too well after a year or so of compressed use, such as with my garage door. I am still looking.

I came up with a very simple and effective way to seal the door bottoms from driving rain and other stuff, as well as permitting the car to be driven in and out without damge to the seal. I use some simple aluminum bar stock and a good quality roll up door bottom seal... as shown above. These seals vary greatly in thickness and quality! Pick up several different brands and look at them carefully, especially their ends, where you can see their differences in thickness. Buy the most robust one you can find, as most of the DIY stores carry some really poor junk... one tore when I rolled a big floor jack over it. The current material isn't bothered at all by my floor jacks rolling over them.

These doors have been in operation since the summer of 2006 and I've had no problems at all with them. The garage is 322 sq. ft. with a 10' ceiling and a large ceiling fan and is easily cooled and humidity lowered with a cheap 5,000 btu window air conditioner, even during our 100+ F degree 98% humidity days.

UPDATE Feb. 12, 2012 -

Best of all I only have to use the 3300 watts setting on my 240v electric portable heater, to keep the garage at 60 degrees in 2F degree weather, cycling about every 30-40 minutes for 10-12 minutes. However, the heater's thermostat has continued to creep up in terms of its minimum temperature setting, now currently a minimum of 72F, way too far above the 55-60F minimum I was using when it was new. A number of other owners of this heater have also noted a thermostat problem, not being able to set a lower minimum temp, which is spec'd at 40F. I have ordered a replacement thermostat from Marley Engineered Products, who builds this heater marketed under several different names, such as Qmark, Marley MUH-35A, etc.

The thermostat is available from Marley at 1-800-654-3545 and is Part Number 5813-2013-000. The new thermostat arrived last week. I noted that this thermostat has two adjustment screws on the back, under a drop of sealant on each one. The original thermostat only had one adjustment. This replacement is only able to control the heat setting down to a minimum of 54-56F and not the 40F minimum it is claimed to be its lowest setting. I would prefer to be able to set the thermostat at 48F. When time permits, I will try the rear adjustments to see if I can lower the minimum temperature. In the meantime, I am using a 40 amp 240 volt Intermatic hot water heater switch, to limit the on times of the heater. I will report my adjustment results, after I have experimented with them.

-Rod

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