door opener on sliding door

egbinor

Member
Anybody have experience adding an opener to sliding shop doors?? I have an 11 by 11 door that has one slider door. Wanting to put an opener on it. ( Put the restored JD M in the garage because new car is wider than the last one and wife keeps banging the side of the pickup! I will loose about 7 inches if I install a roll up door and I'm not wanting to loose that space. (Can't back up trailers like I used to :-( Any help or suggestions deeply appreciated! Thanks in advance!! EGBinOR
 
Friend of mine made some brackets and used a Sears garage door opener. The opener directly moves 1 door and a set of cables and pulleys tied to the opener operate the 2nd half door.
 
I built my garage in 1970 and have sliding doors with operators and remotes on both of them. I used two used operators and lots of cables and pulleys to pull the doors. I have blocks that fasten to the cables and fit I brackets on the doors so that I can disconnect the door from the cable and pull them open manually. They both have multiple buttons and both have remotes in the cars and one has a device outside to open the door that is quite simple but not obvious for unplanned necessity.
I had people ask me how I did it, so, I showed them.
Fred
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Genie screw drive opener makes 1 ft extensions for a regular 7 ft door overhead. I added one for a 12x8 overhead door. I don't know why you couldn't add as many as you want. Not sure how you could mount it to work sideways on a sliding door.

I have an overhead door on old building that is 11x11. Very heavy old wood door. It has a chain hoist to open it.

I can't see why you couldn't use an overhead door with a little modification. If you have to make the opening larger.

I've never been a fan of a slidder.
 
I had thought about making one for my building as well. I don't think it would be to hard to figure out.
 
I have one on my barn with a 10' wide sliding door. Chain drive Sears opener with one of their 'height' extension kits on it. Been working fine for almost 25 years. Not a big deal to put on.
 
As long as the door slides free without any snags or tight spots it should work. The openers have built in load sensors that will stop or reverse the door if it binds.

I prefer chain or belt drive over screw drive. Less to wear out, no grease to drip.
 
I have 6 genie screw drive openers and 3 chamberlin chain dirves. The screw drives have never cause me problem one. The screw drives can be extended for larger than 7 ft doors. One chain drive drives me nuts. For some reason one of the micro-reversing switches on top of opener jumps out of position because the chain bounces. I've tightened chain, made adjustments, and the opener takes spells. It just so happens I have a spare screw drive and the chain drive is about to get retired. My other two chain drives are about 20 years old and no issues.

My choice is the screw drive.
 

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