Changing Exterior Barn Doors

[Arelle]

Hi All! I searched but couldn’t find anything on the topic - either because I’m searching wrong (likely) or because it’s a unique situation.

We bought a new farm earlier in the year and I’ve been working on changing out and adding and demolishing things as we’re going. On my to-do list is changing the exterior barn doors - I hate how they’re hung and while I’m more okay with it in the summer (hot!), I really would like to cut the wind and cold and rain come winter.

My biggest problem is that I don’t know the easiest way to do this (or the most cost effective). I’d rather not pay an arm and a leg, but I also don’t want to have to re-do it down the line.

There are two separate issues:

One - the exterior stall doors slide open to my sacrifice paddock. The problem with the slide mechanism is that there is a large gap ABOVE the door, and the sides of the door aren’t quite flush with the barn. This means that while it keeps a horse in, the door does a fairly poor job of keeping the wind and the rain out (though there is a 12’ overhang outside so the rain has to be at the right angle for it to affect anything).

I don’t know if the old owners tried to install an interior sliding door on an exterior wall, or if they just installed them wrong, or what - but my thinking is I would LOVE a french door set up where the door sits flush with the door frame. I just don’t know the best/cost conscious way to do it.

Two - the main barn doors have the same set up. While they can be somewhat locked down, via a lever mechanism, oh my god - the whistling during a storm is almost unbearable. There’s not a way I can easily get them totally sealed and it’s going to drive me crazy. Since they’re obviously larger - does anyone have any ideas on how to get them completely closed?

They’re essentially like this: http://store.rammfence.com/Images/SDUTCHDR_1.jpg – and the wind is whistling over the top of them and then in the small, essentially less than a quarter inch of space where they don’t have any weather stripping between them.

:winkgrin: Any advice is appreciated!

[Bluey]

We used to have sliding doors in all barns, until we finally gave up the problems those have, the worst that they are not ergonomically well designed for humans and cause back pain from pushing them to slide sideways.

We put in overhead doors.

Wished we had done that decades ago!

Overhead barn doors are the best invention ever for larger barn doors, for many reasons.

Our overhead doors have a brush guard all around that you may be able to make work for your doors, if you want to keep that kind of door and that gap is your only problem.

On the small stall doors, if you have a strong enough door frame, you can hang a regular swinging stall door, if you have enough room to swing it to the outside against the wall, for when you want it left open.

[clanter]

[QUOTE=Bluey;8624113]
We used to have sliding doors in all barns, until we finally gave up the problems those have, the worst that they are not ergonomically well designed for humans and cause back pain from pushing them to slide sideways.

.[/QUOTE]

If proper hardware is used, sliding doors that weigh thousands of pounds can be moved with little force, its stopping that becomes the problem because of the inertia.

Richard-Wilcox has been making hardware since the 1880s, one of my companies was the installing agent for this area for many years… they have a sliding door track (#888) that we used on a Federal Reserve building the doors weight 5,000 pounds each… you could take one hand a push the door

OP just needs to install a weather hood over the track they have, brush seals could be used to stop wind

RW hardware is often used in zoos also

scroll down the link below to RW Hardware Standard … look at page 39 for a barn right end shows a weather hood
http://www.rwhardware.com/download_cat/catalogs/

We also had an overhead door company… biggest problem with overhead doors in barns is the users failure to open the door fully then clipping the bottom section, next problem the normally used hardware is not designed for the environment, next is the quality of the doors has diminished greatly --IF you used overhead door make sure you know the gauge steel used —the lower the number the greater the thickness and be aware “nominal” when referred to as a door’s gauge means they have measured the thickness AFTER the paint has been applied. (example a 25 ga nominal metal door is actually 27 or 28 gauge metal)

Also…if you have overhead doors…do not stack junk next to the track

[ReSomething]

We have weather hoods over our big shop sliders and they make a world of difference.

Any door in a barn application inevitably gets junk piled up near or around it.

Your French doors will wind up lugging on the hinges or some fool will leave enough of something in the door swing zone that you will break your back shoving them open. The roll ups are wonderfull until the day you back into it and ruin the track. Same thing with the slider.
It’s always something.

[airhorse]

Sliders should be adjustable to provide a good fit against the building.

[Bluey]

We had excellent quality sliding doors for years.

They had a metal guard over the top, had rubber seals on the sides, a downside V on the bottom, well adjusted big, heavy duty rollers.

We still had to keep readjusting them, in our fierce winds we eventually had to bolt them shut or take them off the West side, after they kept being blown off.

In the winters, they would freeze on the track, etc.

Now we have rollup doors with a chain that a kid can open and close and reopened the West side of the barn and have not had one single problem with those doors.
The largest is 19’ x 14’ and was a pain with the two sliding doors, 9 1/2’ x 14’ we had before.

I will still say, for bigger barn doors, other than preferring the look of sliding doors, for practical and efficient, overhead doors, where they fit, win hands down.

As for quality or running into them, you can get sorry doors of any kind and you can do damage to any door also, swinging or overhead.

[Ticker]

One thing you can do without replacing the doors is to frame the open space in from the inside using wood. With the door closed, put sides in, we used two by fours, so they cover any gaps and are flush when the door is latched. On the top, place a board or another two by four coming down, then make an L so that the L part is flush with the closed door.
Think of it as making an inner square frame that closes the gaps.
We framed ours like that years ago and it still keeps the barn openings tight and weather proof.
I hope I described that okay

[clanter]

In the winters, they would freeze on the track, etc

easy fix is run a gutter tape inside the V groove roller track … the controller would make the tape self regulating, just need power to it.

AND if you do not want to did the snow out of the way have the doors hung on the inside of the structure