Those with garage door openers should look at this!

I have been doing some work on my three car attached garage. One of the things I have been doing is taking the original drilled angle iron braces out for the tracks for the doors and the braces/brackets for the openers and I made custom heavy steel pieces that look much cleaner. I'll do a write up on that later. When I was installing my new brackets I made for the electric openers I found the original brackets had been installed with very short lag bolts. They went into the studs maybe one inch at best. Each opener brace/bracket had 3 of these short lag bolts. I have heavier industrial door openers. One could have easily one day just fallen down. Yikes! With my new brackets I put in 4 inch long lag bolts. No chance of that ever happening!
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To answer the question before some one asks it: I did have to go in my attic and put in joist hangers between the studs and put in 2 x 4"s so there was something for the lag bolts to go into. Originally the installer just puts a long piece of angle iron on the ceiling to pick up the studs. I wanted to be able to put lag bolts anywhere I needed them when I installed my brackets.

Rodney Dickman
1990 348 TS

 

I disagree. I felt I could have easily turned them a few turns tighter and easily stripped them out. They had very little holding ability only going in the wood around 1 inch. You have to remember that at least 1/4 inch or so is the tapered end. So there was in reality maybe 3/4 inch or less of the threaded lag into the 2 x 4. Plus my commercial grade openers are much heavier than standard home use garage door openers.

Rodney

 

My braces I made are 5/16" by 2" cold rolled steel wire welded. There is no need for a diagonal brace. They have no give. They are very strong. You can go and push on a opener and there is no movement.

Rodney

 

As you can see I also did the brackets for the rails. They had the typical punched hole angle iron and diagonal braces. Now they are just a single heavy duty angle iron. No cross braces. They are very strong and have no need for a cross brace of any type. For that I also had to add some 2x4's in the attic to bolt them to. Once the dry wall work is done and the garage repainted it will look so much cleaner. When I bought this house I loved the attached garage. It looked so clean. Custom made cabinets. Epoxy painted floors etc. But as I lived here that last 5 years I did start to notice how unattractive the brackets holding the openers and rails were. I finally took the time to redo them.

Old picture from when I was buying this house.

Rodney Dickman
1990 348 TS
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I'll also be redoing the low voltage signal wires. They will be relocated to be close to the bracket where they come out of the ceiling. I will also redo the outlets. Since the outlet only needs one plug I will change them all to single plugs. Hopefully white if they sell single white outlets and covers. That will clean things up even more.

Rodney

 

Just a 1990 348 TS.

Rodney
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I would love to reloacte the outlets closer to the brackets but that is a lot of work for so little cosmetic gain.

Rodney