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| We've had many Mortons through the years. No doubt the single post that holds the two door centers when they are shut is the weakest part of their door. I don't think you need to go to the extreme that you are talking about however.
You didn't say if you had wooden frame doors or aluminum, but I don't think it would matter much. Our experience with large doors is all with aluminum.
The problem we've had is the typical bag of sackcrete in the bottom is not enough to hold the post with a lot of wear and tear on it. If you happen to drive over it with a wheel it will sink into the ground. On our last Morton bld in some real sandy dirt we tried to get them to let us do it differently, but no they thought they knew better. After proving them wrong and making sure that they remembered that we had wanted to do it differently from the start they sent their crew back out, we took a 3' auger and dug a hole about 7' deep. We had welded up a post with rebar along the sides sticking out to anchor it in the concrete and then attached their center guide to the top of it. We sat it in the hole and poured concrete all around it, at the top we shapped a rounded surface with a couple of grooves where the doors would run, but left the concrete higher on either side so if a tire goes over it the tire won't be jumping up, but in stead just rolling over the top. This may sound extreme, but this was in some really loose sand.
If you want a door that seals up where you try to keep the air out we poured a concrete lip on a shed here attached to our shop. We took a mini hoe and dug a trench 3' deep and 2' across between the door posts. We then framed up with a 2x so that inside the door was 1.5" higher than where the bottom of the door ran. Again we made a steel post to hold the center hook that Morton had. When the doors are closed they fit snuggly against the concrete lip. The reason we made it so deep was to get below our frost line so it would't heave and because we were going in and out with semi's weighing over 100,000.
My Dad originally thought we'd need the lip to keep large doors from floping in the wind, but I've found that if you hold them tight when you first open them, once you get past the 2 or 3 ft stage the air equalizes (unless you've got other doors open) and they reallly are not that hard to handle.
Hope that helps, if you want pictures let me know and I can snap some, for now I need to get out and move a nurse trailer.
Ray | |
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Morton Shed - Sliding Door Guides
