Garage Door Springs

 It is that time again...

It was the main garage door again, almost exactly 7 years again.  Crazy.

The spring on the smaller door has never needed replacment (knock on wood...), though we use it less.

Garage Heater part duex

 

I built a thermostat to control the heater.  I have a little server running on NAS that it uploads temp/humidity data to and will update the setpoint when it sends data (once a minute).  I don't have it running all the time, only when we are out there and need it.  It was a fun little project.

I will eventually get around to adding graphs, but for now it will cycle the heater on and off as needed to maintain setpoint.

Garage Heater

 I installed a garage heater this weekend.  I have had it for about a year and finally got around to installing it.  I think it will be pretty nice to heat up the garage to work out there.  We aren't going to heat it all the time, that would be pretty wasteful, just when we are out there.

The first issue I ran into was that the heater is a little more narrow then the 24 inch rafters in the ceiling.  so I just screwed a 2x4 into it and screwed into that.

I used these thread hanging screws that worked OK, probably should have just used angle iron like everyone else does.  Trying to muscle the heater onto the posts was a challenge.  I wish I would have had a drywall lift.  You can see the rods were able to move around a bit which allowed it to work.  The fit was quite tight.

It feels very secure and doesn't move around at all, so I am pretty confident in the threaded rods.  Once it was up, I had to figure out where the exhaust would go.  I used a carpentry square to figure out where to make the hole in the wall.

Always the scariest part, putting a hole in an exterior wall.  I used a rotozip tool, which made quick work of making the hole in the drywall.  I used an ocsillating tool on the vinyl outside, since I had a block with j-channel built in.  Getting the siding off so I could slide the j-channel in was a challenge in the cool weather.

I originally just had the exhaust blowing out pretty close to the soffit.  But thought better of it and added another 19 inches of length, I don't think it will hurt anything there.  It is supposed to be 4 feet out, but that would be really far out!  Since we aren't running it all the time, I am OK with where it is at.

Here it is running.  I am working on making a thermostat, and I need to put in an outlet to plug it into.  I am also dealing with a small gas leak.  I had a bigger leak, but it turned out that I needed to use pipe dope instead of tape on the connector hose, they need to seat all the way into tube.  I think the new little leak is at the test port, I tested the pressure 7.8 inches into the value and 4 inches going into the manifold.

Winter Prep

Winter is coming fast, so one has to get water out of systems.  This is the place in our basement where we turn off the water to the garage faucet.  I have to turn them off then unscrew a screw to have them drain out.  You also have to open the values in the garage otherwise a vacuum forms and water doesn't come out.

I also like to drain some water out of the water heater at this time of year to clean out any mineral build up.  I generally don't get much, which surprises me since we have hard water.  I can only imagine what the inside of the tank looks like...

This time though I loosened the nut and the faucet started dripping.  Luckily it was a simple matter to tighten it up again.

I also ran anti-freeze through the yard sprayer tonight, because it would be a bummer to lose that.

Expanding Storage

Awhile ago, I had put in a platform over my work bench in the garage to store "stuff".  It was about 6 feet by 4 feet and stored our lawn chairs, old pipe, tennis racks and such.  Well, we needed it to hold more.  So now it is 6 feet by 10 feet :)  The kids think it will make a great play space now.

Garage Door Springs, time to replace

Well, the house is 7 and a half years old now so it was bound to happen.  I had actually been thinking about picking up a couple replacement springs a couple weeks ago.  Jen had went to pick the kids up from the bus stop after school, when they got back from the bus stop and tried to open the door it would only open about a foot.

So they ended up sitting on the porch reading books till I got home from work (Jen had left her cell phone and there is no way to get into the house short of breaking a window...)  Once I got home we got into the garage through the other door and were able to check out the damage.

Sure enough the spring on the left was in 2 pieces.  The one on the right was still in one piece, but I thought it might be broken as well.  I started to loosen the set screws on the springs and drums so I could take off the springs.  I didn't let the tension out of the right one and I should have, because once it loosened up it released quickly.

Off the Menards to pick up some springs, I took the old one to compare and finally found one that matched fairly well and picked up a Left and Right wound spring.  $80 for the pair plus $10 for a set of steel bars to wind them (I had a pair but could only find one of them, of course I found the other one the next day).

Once I had the springs it took about 30 minutes to put them up.  The door even sounds better then before, I am not sure they were wound as tight as they should have been.  The lefthand / righthand winding confused me for a minute, till I looked at the directions and saw that the lefthand winding goes on the right side of the garage as you look out.  Then that was easy.

Working on torsion springs is a little nerve racking, but that is a good thing they can be dangerous.  But if you are careful and take your time, I don't see why it isn't a DIY project.

8 years ago I hired someone to come fix springs at our old house, I will do everything to avoid that again.

Attic Ladder

I purchased an attic ladder for our garage shortly after we built our house.  It has been garage decor since that time.  I finally had a feel weekend a month ago and we decided to put it in.  It actually went in fairly easily, but it does take two people.

You need an opening in your ceiling, then headers on either side of the opening.  The ladder is designed to fit between trusses 24 inches on center.  Then you put up some temporary boards to rest the ladder on.  Finally you secure the ladder, then test the length of the ladder.

Unfortunately, the ladder we purchased was a bit too short, so in order to use it safely you have to put a 4x4 under the end of the stairs.

Garden Update

So now it has been about 3 weeks since I started this project. The beans and peas are really doing amazing, there are already some beans coming in.

It is about time to get them outside I think. My folks dropped off a tiller for us to use, so I need to till up some ground and get a fence for the bunnies/deer.

Doors and Trim

The doors are up, the trim is being put on, and the garage doors are on.

Vapor Barrier in the garage

Steve told me the weekend that we insulated the garage that they were going to poly the garage, because you have to behind drywall... Of course after that he told me I had to poly the garage, otherwise it was going to cost me...

I can tell you that putting up poly is a huge pain the butt. But with the help of my folks, sister and wife we got the job done. Of course, I had to finish up this morning before work.

Garage floor

We have a garage floor. As you can see we insulated the walls as well. Now Steve says we have to poly the walls and ceiling as well... What a pain, on Saturday he said not to do that because they would have to do it anyway before they dry walled. I am getting very frustrated with him in particular.

Garage Door Repair

Monday morning as I was leaving for work, the garage door gets stuck halfway down. Damn. I get out and with my vast technical know-how determine that the wire that runs up to the "drum" from the bottom of the door has jumped out of the track. Whew no big deal...

I get out up there in my work cloths and try to just pull the wire back onto the drum, no luck. Now I actually put the torsion spring on the garage door the last time they snapped so I had a pretty good idea of what I had to do, however after talking with a co-worker decided to just have someone come and fix it.

I called up a couple of places, one was $99 for the service call, one was $40. So which did I have come out, the $40 place of course. Reliant Garage out of St. Paul. James was the man's name.

I should have guessed how this was going to go down, but we are putting our house up for sale and I needed to get this fixed quick. James gets to our house about 15 minutes early, so I rush out of work to meet him. James walks into the garage, looks around for a minute then tells me:

• He can't re-tension my spring (company policy), so he will have to install new ones (299)
• He touches one of the rollers on my door and tells me the ball-bearings are shot and will need to replace them all (199)

Actually, I can't remember all the stuff because it ended up that it was going to cost me 600 dollars. Gut check. Um, James, I don't think so. I just installed those springs 2 years ago, so I am not going to replace those.

James looks all concerned and reports that he will call his office and check to see what he can do. He reports that he can re-tension my springs for $99, but then he can't warranty the work, as long as I replace the rollers. End cost $300.

Again, um, no James, I don't want to replace the rollers. This is getting pretty annoying at this point. James calls in again and reports that with great concern for my satisfaction he will re-tension the spring for $99, oh plus the original $40 service call... At this point I agree, because I am getting tired of arguing. This has taken about 10 minutes, it is now about the time of the original service call.

At this point I describe how I was planning on doing this repair myself, to which he replies that I will definitely hurt my self and should not do it myself. So I let him proceed.

He raises the door, loosens the screws on the drums, lowers the door, reattaches the wires to the drums, loosens the screws on the springs, re-winds the springs, done.

He was done with this work in less then 5 minutes. Walks up to me and asks for a check, I ask if I can check the operation of the door openers first, yeah, yeah. Writes me up a receipt. I ask how what I described earlier was any different then what he did. Oh, you wanted to leave the door up and rewind the wires on the drums. No I didn't. Oh then you described how I did it. WTF.

$139 dollars later and a working door. No tax charged, hmm. Anyways, I am happy to have a working door, but I wish I had had more confidence in my ability. I told my co-worker, that I need to start a garage door repair business...

In any case, garage door springs can be dangerous, however, I think that their danger is exaggerated and that a careful person can perform routine repairs pretty safely.