Steel Roll up Door

[Suprared89]

Team Garage Journal,
I am looking into buying a small warehouse in a not so safe area. The plan is to use it as a "toy box" I plan on keeping a few classic cars in it and have it as a personal workshop. I have seen some commercial buildings in New York that have these steel roll up doors. I think I will need these. Does anyone have experience with these?
The building is cinder block construction. My aim would be to have roll up door anchored to the wall. Lock and chain on the outside or inside to roll the door up.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Crabman]

There are a few threads about this issue.

Here is one:

Need a roll-up door for a small older garage.

We have a seventy-five-year-old small frame single-car garage with the old two-section wooden overhead door, which needs replacing. I'd like to replace it with a roll-up type door, but the lower-end priced ones I see don't work with openers. The high-end, i.e. Overhead Door, are priced like a...

www.garagejournal.com

If you do a search for roll up doors you may find what you are looking for.

Good luck finding the right fit.

 

[Kaizen]

Standard fare around GJ. I have two that i bought from home depot that i use. They don't have chains now they have a tensioner so it is easy to lift. However anyone can bust through it by backing into it, gain entry, and steal your stuff. I went this route as it was the cheapest and i didnt want it on the ceiling like normal doors.
If you are trying to protect your stuff i'd get a custom heavy duty steel barn door on the inside of this thing that you would need to spend some time with a grinder cutting through........as well as a good securtiy system.

 

[yatg]

I am looking into buying a small warehouse in a not so safe area.

would you feel comfortable about working late and locking up at midnight?
"not so safe area" tends to get worse over time.
spend your money on a better area.

 

[Suprared89]

yatg,
I am leaning in that direction...... The cost of securing the building alone with the mental anguish being way from it will outweigh the cost savings.

 

[finn]

Standard fare around GJ. I have two that i bought from home depot that i use. They don't have chains now they have a tensioner so it is easy to lift. However anyone can bust through it by backing into it, gain entry, and steal your stuff. I went this route as it was the cheapest and i didnt want it on the ceiling like normal doors.
If you are trying to protect your stuff i'd get a custom heavy duty steel barn door on the inside of this thing that you would need to spend some time with a grinder cutting through........as well as a good securtiy system.

Correct. I have a roll up from Menards on a small, older building used to store mostly building materials and Mustang parts.

It had to be custom ordered to size, since it’s a retrofit. I think it’s by Ideal.

Serves me well, but it’s not a commercial door to secure a building in a sketchy neighborhood. For that, be prepared to shell out some real money.

Inexpensive and secure don’t go together.

 

[reader2580]

A lot of the roll up doors in places like New York City are covering up other doors and windows so they don’t get broken into, or vandalized.

I put a roll up door on my new garage because I got it reasonably inexpensive. I am not storing anything of great value, but it doesn’t seem all that theft proof.

 

[hobie18]

Standard fare around GJ. I have two that i bought from home depot that i use. They don't have chains now they have a tensioner so it is easy to lift. However anyone can bust through it by backing into it, gain entry, and steal your stuff.

Yep. My mechanic has to park cars inside right up to the door. For that very reason.

 

[rsanter]

Do you research, roll up doors are not as safe and secure as you may think they are.
I’m sure there are ones that are better than others, but all have weaknesses

If you go this route then you will want steel bollards to protect them.

I may be wrong but a pair of big steel swing doors with holding bars on the inside are likely the most secure

 

[reader2580]

If theft is a huge concern are sectional garage doors really that much more secure than a roll up door? Couldn't someone also drive through a sectional garage door too if they are motivated enough?

 

[TonyG109]

Cinder block walls aren't as big a deterrent as everyone assumes. I know of a cinder block building that backed up to a fencing company. The fencing company had hundreds of steel fencing pipes that were perfect for using as a battering ram. These were used to break out several cinder blocks on the back of the building that would allow entry into the building. The tenants of the building only put glass break sensors on the front of the building and entry alarms on the doors. They figured they didn't need motion detectors on the interior since they covered all the entry points. The back of the building started looking like a jigsaw puzzle from all the patched cinder blocks.

Determined thieves will also enter through roof vents or even peel up the roofing metal. AND once they are in the building, they can move from tenant to tenant thru common walls which are sometimes just drywall!

Like Yatg suggested, I'd stay in a better part of town (and still install motion detectors).

 

[Kaizen]

Cinder block walls aren't as big a deterrent as everyone assumes. I know of a cinder block building that backed up to a fencing company. The fencing company had hundreds of steel fencing pipes that were perfect for using as a battering ram. These were used to break out several cinder blocks on the back of the building that would allow entry into the building. The tenants of the building only put glass break sensors on the front of the building and entry alarms on the doors. They figured they didn't need motion detectors on the interior since they covered all the entry points. The back of the building started looking like a jigsaw puzzle from all the patched cinder blocks.

Determined thieves will also enter through roof vents or even peel up the roofing metal. AND once they are in the building, they can move from tenant to tenant thru common walls which are sometimes just drywall!

Like Yatg suggested, I'd stay in a better part of town (and still install motion detectors).

I used to work at a home depot and one of the drivers left the keys in the moffet delivery forklift. Someone took it and punched the whole thing right through a 20 foot cinder block wall of a store in the same plaza. Only reason they didn't go all the way in was they got caught up on the blocks. rebar snapped like chopsticks.

 

[mikegt4]

I used to work at a home depot and one of the drivers left the keys in the moffet delivery forklift. Someone took it and punched the whole thing right through a 20 foot cinder block wall of a store in the same plaza. Only reason they didn't go all the way in was they got caught up on the blocks. rebar snapped like chopsticks.

Back in the mid 1970's a friend of mine and I had the use of a "contractor's garage" for a year (his mother was the landlord's secretary). The unit next to us was occupied by a guy that owned a large local tire store and he used his unit for "toy storage" although he probably wrote it off as "tire storage" for his business. One night a teenager broke into the construction business' storage lot behind us and proceeded to fire up a crane and poked a rather large hole through the cement block rear wall of our neighbor's unit. IIRC he stole some tools but left a McLaren CanAm race car untouched. I didn't take long for the police to catch up with the thief, they were familar with him. After seeing the damage I never again thought of a cement block wall as secure from anyone who wants in. Of course the same could be said for just about any type of construction especially these days with powerful battery powered tools.