Non-Electric Hangar Doors

Have you ever heard of a Ladd door?  Bob Ladd was an early EAAer who designed a simple, low-cost, DIY hangar door.  Plans and parts kits are available:

http://ultimatedoor.homestead.com/ultimate.html

There are a lot of hangars with Ladd doors around the Milwaukee area (the craddle of EAA) and they all seem to be holding up well.  Give it a try.

 

That's a good looking set up. It is probably what I am looking for.   Thanks for the good info Jeff.

Does anyone else have any ideas?

Todd,

Are you looking for 'Cheap' or 'Dirt Cheap'?

I built my hangar with tri-fold doors for $300 using used lumber and corrugated tin. I bought some new hinge and roller hardware, and found the track off an old barn.

The doors are in three sections each, with the inner ones hinged to swing open to the second, or middle one.

The middle and outer sections accordian open so they do not go out beyond the width of the hangar. Took some redneck engineering, but it works pretty good as long as I can keep the birds out of the track. I will admit it's on my own property so I don't have to worry about the "airport rules".

I thought I had a picture, but can't find it at the moment. I can go take a couple and post them in the next couple days if you are interested.

Corey

I think I get the idea Corey. Sliding tri-fold doors. That sounds simple enough. Do you have to do anything to keep the wind from blowing it? The wind really blows here in SD. 25 to 35 knots is normal. Yesterday it was gusting to fifty, which is little more than an annoyance here.  I like the cheap part because this is supposed to be a hobby.  I think people in this industry forget that sometimes.

Thanks for your Ideas Corey

 

I ordered plans from Karen and Greg at Ultimatedoor.com. They are some super-nice people!

A pilot built a hangar across the taxiway from me and wanted to save money on a door. He purchased two (2) ordinary garage doors; the kind that roll up and are made in horizontal sections that run in tracks on the side of the door. He put a column in the center between the doors that was hinged at the top. The bottom of the center column was pinned to the concrete floor with removable steel pins..like rebar. The hinged center column held the tracks that the inner edges of the doors rode on. After raising the two doors, he removes the pins, and uses a cable across pulleys to a counterweight hanging at one side to tilt up the center column on its hinge at the top. The entire width of the two doors, plus the center column width is now available for passage...he used 12-ft doors, so he gets 24-ft plus the 8-inches or so that the center column is wide.

 

If you want more data I can take photos and send them to you.

 

John at Salida, CO

RV6A built and flown 15 years/sold

RV-12 almost done

My hangar also has two roll-up garage doors with a center post.  I had never seen such a scheme before, but it works really well.  Attached is a photo of one of the units with the doors rolled partway up; you can see the track on which the center post rolls out toward the camera when the doors are completely open, leaving an opening wide enough for a Cessna 172 to come straight out.  It's very easy to operate.

 

Files Attachment(s):
pict0032.jpg (681991 bytes)

I wasn't real keen on the  removable centerpost idea, but after seeing the pictures, it looks like a good idea, too.

These guys also have a couple options and are at Airventure every year.

 http://cool-airinc.com/

 

In my opinion, don't bother with this one:

http://www.hangardoorsecrets.com/

It's mostly reprints from other websites and information you can find in Google.  I purchased it and promptly asked for my money back.

I appreciate everybody's ideas. I am glad I asked the question. I have heard a lot of good things about the Ultimate Door set-up, and the cool-air company has a lot of good options. I think the center-post door ideas will be useful, too. I am sure other people will be interested in this topic from time to time, so if you have any ideas that haven't been covered, please post them here for future reference.

 

Thanks