Amazing Overhead Shop Door Has
Features Not Found On Any Commercial Door
When Fred Butuk put up a state-of-the-art farm shop, one of his
priorities was to fit it with a top-of-the-line overhead door.
"There were plenty of overhead doors out there that would have fit
the building, but I wanted to heat it and I didn't want the doors to
let out all the heat," says Butuk, of Insinger, Saskatchewan.
His shop building is a 40 by 60-ft. steel frame structure. When he
put up the building, Butuk left a door opening 26 ft. wide by 14 ft.
high. Besides wanting to heat the building to a comfortable
temperature, he needed specially sized doors. He wanted two separate
doors in that opening, but he also wanted to be able to bring in
equipment bigger than either door, such as his combine with its 24
ft. head.
He talked to several door manufacturers, but none made a door like
he wanted. No one made a door thicker than 2 in., and that wasn't
enough insulation for Butuk.
And no one could figure out how to make two overhead doors that
would open independently and still allow him to use the full width of
both openings when he wanted to. "Everybody said I would need a
permanent center post," he says.
Rather than settle for something less than he wanted, Butuk
decided it couldn't be that difficult to build his own door. It took
a lot of study and some help from a friend, Grant Simpson, who
educated him on the workings of overhead doors.
The finished door has two sections: one 10 ft. wide and the other
16 ft. wide. Between them is a removable post that can be taken out
once both doors are raised. When I'm in the pickup, I open the 10-ft.
door. If I have something a little bigger, I use the 16-ft. door," he
says. "I don't lose nearly as much heat as I would if I had to open
the entire 26-ft. width."
The doors are made up of 2-ft. high sections, 4 in. thick. He put
a double layer of 2-in. thick foil-backed Styrofoam sheets inside.
Outside, he used 20-ga. satin-coated, galvanized steel which he could
paint to match his building.
"To assemble the door sections, we just pop-riveted all the pieces
together, making sure that the parts were held flat and true in a
jig."
Hinges, rollers and drums posed little problem. He just bought the
heaviest door hardware available.
The biggest challenge Butuk faced was how to raise the big doors.
His 16-ft. door weighs nearly 1,350 lbs. The 10-ft. door is about 840
lbs.
"All the door makers said they could not guarantee winding a
spring for such a door, so I figured a counterbalance system would be
the best way to do it," he says.
He made flat, square counterweights out of concrete that he
attached to lift cables. There's one weight per each section of the
door. "I made the weights just a few pounds lighter than the doors,"
he says, "so I could add slugs to fine-tune operation of the
door."
Lift cables run from the bottom of the door to the top and then
completely across the width of the building to the opposite corner
where the counter weight frame is located. The seven counter weights
(per door) are suspended on the cable so that as each door panel
reaches the top of the track, a weight comes to rest on the floor
until the door is all the way up and all the weights are piled on top
of each other.
The removable doorpost is made from 4 by 8-in. rectangular tubing.
Butuk turned the doorpost into an air pressure tank by welding it
completely shut. It's heavy enough to withstand maximum air pressures
he can produce in the shop. Air brake "pots" are individually plumbed
into each end of the post to hold it in place.
The bottom brake pot is pressurized to force a 2-in. pin into an
anchor point in the floor. To remove the post, he simply releases the
pressure on the bottom brake pot. The air brake at the top of the
post is used to lift it onto a trolley so it can be rolled aside,
enabling Fred to use the full 26-ft. wide opening.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Fred Butuk, Box 87, Insinger, Sask.,
Canada S0A 1L0 (ph 306 849-4736; fax 306 849-4520; E-mail:
fred.butuk@sk.sympatico.ca)
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