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High lift garage door conversion/best opener

Joined
16 September 2003
Messages
237
Due to getting a garage lift (post pending) i had my standard 2 car garage door raised to afford the max usable room. They left the exist track in place up to about 6 feet. They replaced the rest above with what you see in the pics raising the final open door position to just a few inches from my 10 ft ceiling. Cost for me was around $400 less opener, but i had to replace the entire spring rod/pully assembly. So yours might be less. You could do this yourself except raising the door does increase the load so your exist springs may not cut it and figureing the tension of the new springs would require trusting a vendor. I do everything i can, but this wasn't worth the hassle and the Wayne Dalton installer i use does free service calls for just about forever. FWIW wayne daltons garage doors are excellent, although a bit pricy.

I also had them install a fantastic opener, the Liftmaster 3800 jackscrew unit. From my research, this is the best unit available. It slides right on the shaft itself, has a great service record, and an awesome automatic deadbolt. It is nearly silent and nothing hanging anywhere. It's around $300 on ebay and could easily be self installed. Only downside is it comes with a bells and whistles keypad with temperature and time. I replaced it at no charge with a "lower" level unit with less complexity that i like much better. I plan to relocate the gov mandated electric eyes to a corner somewhere where they will not be in the way, just eye to eye. The opener itself still has the usual reverse on obstruction feature, the eyes are just double liability for them. The eyes easily get out of alighnment and stop function.
 

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I did a similar installation 10 years ago when I installed a storage lift. I added a dummy panel to the top of my garage door, which simplified the spring calculations. The extra panel is totally inside the garage on the sloping part of the track, is totally undetectable from the outside, but does look a little funny from the inside.

You chose a nice opener. I stuck with my 20 year old conventional Sears unit, so I have all that stuff hanging down. But, it works well. So far I've been too cheap to get your model opener. :redface:

I recently replaced my 2 old wood doors with steel doors and again did the installation work myself. As an engineer I did my own spring calculations.
The side with the lift freaked out the company supplying the doors & springs. I basically told them to ignore what's there and provide a spring per my calculations. It all worked out fine.

As to your comment on the "eyes" going out of alignment, I've never seen that happen. But, I have seen them fail with age. The lenses are such a wide angle that I had replacement units working when they were lying on the floor before I snapped them into the brackets.

If you have young kids around, the eyes make a lot of sense. But, without kids present, I have to agree they can be an annoyance.
 
It sure would have saved me a lot of time if you posted that link 10 years ago.:biggrin: Good stuff!
 
I didn't find that excellent link either. After brainstorming with a head installer, we decided to break the door track away from the frame as movement starts which gives us the ability to cam the door into the seal a bit better than the way the link does. Different strokes. Regarding the eyes, i simply asked the installers what fails, and the eyes and the latest wall controls came up. I don't have the children issue. I added a door bell switch right at the door itself so i can set my alarm and just walk out hitting the door bell switch on the way out, no having to "beat" the door or to rush to get to a remote. Maximum convenience. I also installed a keypad on the outside for backup.
 
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