What is a high lift garage door?
Garage door lift is defined by how many inches above the top of the door opening that your
garage door will sit when it is in the open position. The lift is determined by the garage door
track it comes in two different styles one is low headroom and the other is standard lift. There
are two parts to garage door track : Vertical track and horizontal track.
The horizontal track always has a curve and it comes in different measurements of radius. Standard
lift garage door track comes in 10 inch 12 inch and 15 inch radius and this will give you your lift.
10 inch being the lowest lift and 15 inch radius being your high lift garage door application. The
only thing that a high lift garage door does is gets the door closer to the ceiling of the garage.
They do make track that can lift a garage door many feet over the opening but this is usually
used in commercial garage door applications.
You must remember also that anything above 15
inches of lift you are probably going to have problems using a conventional garage door opener
with a rail system you would most likely have to convert over to a jack shaft system which does
not use a rail or arm to pull on the door. Jack shaft opener’s attach directly to the torsion pole
and turning the pole left or right will open or close the garage door.
Also, when you have a high lift garage
door you have to make sure there will be enough room for a garage door opener
because you don’t want the opener to be too close to the ceiling. Personally I don’t see any
advantage to a high lift garage door unless it is needed because of the type of garage door you
may be installing but moving the door closer to the ceiling doesn’t really give you any advantage
in your garage if you have an oversize vehicle, it has to be able to fit underneath the
door opening. Low headroom track can sometimes give you an extra advantage in your garage
because if there is a lot of ceiling or roof space that is open you can build a storage loft and
have more storage for your things and you can use a low headroom track system so you can
maximize that space in your garage.
Sometimes it is necessary to use a higher lift track to
get around obstacles in a garage like builtin cabinets that a homeowner does not want to
remove or modify in anyway and standard track would interfere with those cabinets or the
cabinets would interfere with the track so a higher lift track will get you up and over those
cabinets so that the door can function properly.
