Can a garage door opener operate at an angle?
I'm thinking about adding a lift to my garage. My ceilings are 10.5 feet, but the lowest point of the door operator is 8'3" from the floor. I'm wondering if I can keep the wall mount pivot where it is, extend the arm and bring the motor closer to the ceiling.
I know I could add another pad to the wall and move the whole system up, but I'd like to know if that's even necessary.
Not sure about your question, but i have seen a few people with your problem swapping in a jackshaft wall mounted unit. Something like this:
They free up a lot of space.
I would say no problem.
While the jackshaft might be the "right" way to do it, I've seen DIY standard garage door openers mounted vertically on the wall succesfully, so a slight angle shouldn't cause problems.
Appropriately adjusted spring tension does 95% of the work anyways.
Slippery wrote: Not sure about your question, but i have seen a few people with your problem swapping in a jackshaft wall mounted unit. Something like this: Liftmaster wall mount unit They free up a lot of space.
Oooh, I LIKE that. I'm going to have to save that for when I hopefully am trying to put a lift in down the line...
I like that Liftmaster 8500 too. $349 seems to be the going price for them, not bad if you think about it.
The wall mounted opener and high left tracks let me get the most out of my 10 1/2 foot ceiling.
Did it after we had a wind storm (110-135 mph winds) that ripped the door off the old tracks.
Great, now I need one of those too
I've seen conventional openers mounted to one side of the door rather than in the middle, and they seem to work okay that way
Some doors don't like being pulled unevenly though.
Even if it works, I wouldn't do it.
I guarantee sooner or later someone will hit the "up" button when a car is raised on the lift. 
It's really easy to extend the pads and vertical tracks and put the tracks closer to the ceiling as well.
Yeah, I may just move the tracks up and get a wall mounted opener.
In reply to Woody:
I recommend it-- you can see in my photo that I actually had to remove one of the light bulbs from the (cheap) fixture because the door now runs that close to the ceiling.
The high lift tracks also mean that the door comes out that much less across the ceiling.
Talk to me about raising the tracks. What was involved?
according to the one I just installed, it says the motor/gear has to be lower than the wall moint; Don't know why.
Woody wrote: Talk to me about raising the tracks. What was involved?
It's really just more hardware and bracketry to run the rails farther up the wall before it arcs over, along with mounting the jackshaft much higher.
The jackshaft may also need large pulleys and you will also more than likely need longer counterbalance cables, since the bottom of the door is now farther from the jackshaft.
As some jackshafts are a little on the flimsy side (depends on who may have been the lowest bidder during home construction) to be torqued by the opener from one end, it may just be simpler to replace the whole assembly at the time of install.
It's moderately self evident if you look at the picture above of the installation and compare it to the middle bay door.
I stopped by Overhead Door this afternoon and started asking questions. They don't manufacture a wall mounted unit, but they also sell the Lift Master and he actually had one installed in their warehouse. First of all, it was amazingly quiet. He said that I could raise the whole track and thereby move the open door closer to the ceiling. To use the wall mounted operator, the torsion spring needs different pulleys (think variable ratio) and since it would be moved up as well, it would need longer cables. At that point, i would be more cost effective to just replace it with a new spring assembly. I would also need a couple of extra pieces of track. He said that the whole system including installation would be about $1200.
He also told be that he has been raising a bunch of rails lately for people who are installing lifts. Enough that he was joking about selling lifts himself. He suggested that I take full advantage of the ten and a half foot ceiling height and install a bigger lift.
So, I still have a bunch of stuff to think about. I'm going to have his guy come out to take a look at my garage and given me an actual estimate. I can see myself tackling this job myself, though.
Oh, and for my original angle question: He said that it would probably be able to pull the door up, but the angle of the arm would cause a problem when the door was being pushed down against the tension of the spring.
Curmudgeon wrote: I like that Liftmaster 8500 too. $349 seems to be the going price for them, not bad if you think about it.
The Lift Master website isn't really clear about the difference, but they have two models, the 8500 and the 3800. They seem to be mechanically identical. I think that the 8500 just comes a controller that you can operate from your phone or computer, which I don't need. The guy at OHD just had info on the 3800.
It's certainly great to take advantage of all the height you can get.
Do you have the 8500 or 3800?
In reply to Woody:
3800
It is quiet, especially compared to a regular chain drive operator.
Get a longer J hook and lift the assembly up higher?
Woody, I stumbled into this link while researching garage doors myself - hope this helps
http://ddmgaragedoors.com/diy-instructions/garage-door-high-lift-conversion.php
$1200 for Overhead Door to raise what you've got, or $319 for a Liftmaster?
That doesn't sound too hard.
No that was the price including the Lift Master unit, spring, pulleys installation and everything else.
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