Preventing Rain From Blowing Under A Garage Door

[Too_Many_Tools]

I am posting this for a friend....he has a large shop with several
large roll up doors. When it rains heavily and the wind is blowing
into the doors, water will enter the shop under the rubber door
seal...lots of water.

Any suggestions as to how to prevent the water from entering?

Thanks

TMT

[Tom Gardner]

"Too_Many_Tools" <too_man...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1191119114....@n39g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...

I use a tarp folded under/over sandbags, works fine but a pain.

[J. Clarke]

There are various brands of garage door threshold that might help.
Google "Garage door seal" and you'll find hits on several brands and a
variety of suppliers.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

[Mark & Juanita]

Too_Many_Tools wrote:

Woodworkers Supply used to have a threshold you could buy. Seems like it
was about $75 for a single bay door size. Included a rubber threshold and
a tube of silicone seal.

I still have an unopened one sitting in my shop, it's about 8 years old
though. Didn't need it after I installed the french doors where the
roll-up door used to be.
--
If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough

[Bruce L. Bergman]

A good rubber seal for the bottom of the door.

And a trench drain right in front of the door (within 6" if you can)
with the concrete under the door sloped towards it. So all that wind-
blown water falls in the trench drain and drains away before the door
seal has to deal with it.

If you plan on moving heavy gear in and out of the door, they make
trench drains with cast iron or cast steel grates that can take it.

We need to dig in a gravity drain for our front yard, and it has to
go right in front of the garage door. I plan to slow down and make it
a trench drain as it goes across the opening. Then all I have to do
is rent a concrete profile grinder to retroactively put the drain
slope on the lip of the garage slab past the door resting location...

--<< Bruce >>--

[Markem]

On Sat, 29 Sep 2007 19:25:14 -0700, Too_Many_Tools
<too_man...@yahoo.com> wrote:

How the grading outside the doors?

Mark

[Bob Engelhardt]

Rain, even wind-driven rain, does not have enough pressure to force its
way in, in quantity. There has to be gaps in the seal, or insufficient
pressure.

Gaps would be caused by uneven concrete. Some uneven-ness is expected &
is taken up by the flexibility of the seal. First thing to try is to
increase the pressure on the seal by reducing the lifting spring
tension. If that doesn't work, because the floor is too uneven, a
different seal might work. A flap on the outside would likely be better
than a compression seal under the door.

If not, the floor needs to be leveled. Except that is not very
practical, so a threshold needs to be installed. The problem with that
would be moving heavy machinery over it.

Bob

[BobS]

"Too_Many_Tools" <too_man...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1191119114....@n39g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...

The compression seal isn't working obviously or the door isn't being held
down during windy conditions. One simple trick is to get a roll of 1/2"
round backer foam from the borg and feed a length of that into the end of
the compression seal on the bottom of the garage door. You may have to take
off the old seal in order to get that foam backer pushed thru to the other
end, then reinstall the seal. That alone makes a big difference in sealing
a uneven threshold.

Then make sure the door is adjusted to specs which usually means that the
door is not properly adjusted if an 82 year little lady from Pasadena can't
raise and lower the door using only one hand. And it should hold it's
position at any place it's stopped.

Bob S.

[lew hartswick]

Too_Many_Tools wrote:

I've seen a small "bump" on the floor right up against the inside
of the door (on the floor) it seems to do the trick. The one I saw
was part of the concrete floor but would think a well cemented
down one made of some priable material (rubber like) would do the
same thing.
...lew...

[Puckdropper]

Markem <markem(sixoneeight)@hotmail.com> wrote in
news:ub4vf3d0udkum7fuu...@4ax.com:

One thing you could try is putting a drain in on the other side of the
garage door. It would be a trough drain, starting at one end of the door
and ending at the other. Water would then be encouraged to run in to it
and out of the building somehow. It doesn't prevent the water from
getting IN the garage doors, but it does prevent the water from doing
much damage.

I've never tried it, I only thought of it as a solution to the same
problem. The garage builders sloped the outside of the garage
incorrectly so just about every rain brought flooding.

Puckdropper
--
Wise is the man who attempts to answer his question before asking it.

To email me directly, send a message to puckdropper (at) fastmail.fm

[Gunner Asch]

If one looks around...one can find rolls of computer room "wire
covers" that used to be laid on the floor with double stick carpet
tape and wires laid in it so yall could walk over it and not trip.

Ive used it to seal garage doors, quite nicely.

Gunner

[Carl McIver]

"Too_Many_Tools" <too_man...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1191119114....@n39g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...

The water is following the airflow. There's a higher pressure outside
the building than inside, so when the wind blows, you have pressure
gradients. My wife and I were in a hotel in Dallas a few years ago, and the
horizontal rain (driven by wind, of course) put a high pressure area on the
windward side of the hotel, filling several rooms on that side of the hotel
with up to an inch of water. We had to move to another room.
My point is that you can seal it with every gadget known to man, and it
will still leak, or you can try and find a way to equalize the air pressure
difference in a passive way, such as vents or wall louvers.