We are in Sparta, New Jersey today for a 16 x 7 garage door replacement working in Lake Mohawk. Lake Mohawk is a quaint lake community in Sussex County New Jersey that offers resort-style living less than an hour outside of New York City.
It is a cold day in January. It is only 8 degrees here today. Cold weather or not it’s time to get this door in. We are taking out an ancient Crawford wood door. It is most likely original to the house.
The door is way past its normal life expectancy and is beginning to fall apart. The bottom rail, which holds all the spring tension, is starting to separate and has bracing added to try and prolong the life of the door, but it is time to replace it. The door has become dangerous.
Our customer is planning on making the garage a workshop area that has been insulated and he will be adding heat. For that reason, we went with a thicker 2-inch sandwich door with better insulation.
Together with our customer, we chose to go with an Amarr Lincoln 3000 16 x 7 garage door. It is a 2-inch steel sandwich-style traditional garage door. It is a good balance of quality and price. On the outside, it is a traditional raised panel with a row of Stockton glass along the top of the door in white.
We went with a 32” radius track versus the standard 12R to allow the door to go closer to the ceiling and give the garage a more open feeling. The larger track radius will also allow for smoother operation. A 32R track is a great option to get the door closer to the ceiling, it is less expensive than a traditional high-lift track set-up if your ceiling clearance will allow it.
The 20+ year-old garage door opener was also replaced with a Liftmaster 8500W Side Mount Jack-shaft operator. This mounts to the side of the door near the ceiling. It turns the torsion tube with fewer moving parts for a quieter operation. This eliminates added stress on the top section of the door because there is no drawbar pushing and pulling on it every time the door operates. The larger 32R track radius also calls for the side-mounted opener because the door still has to travel up vertically before starting to come back into the horizontal tracks.
Prior to arriving at the job, we asked our customer to extend the pads (Lumber that the track attaches to) to the ceiling to accommodate the taller tracks. This is something that we can do for you, however, our customer offered to do the carpentry themselves to save a little money. They also had a licensed electrician add an outlet for the side-mounted opener.
The job went smoothly other than the bitter cold temperatures. It was a nice clean install and our customer is one step closer to having his dream garage.