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Unless you are building a new hangar, you will likely not have a choice of what type of hangar door you have but if you do, you should consider the pros and cons of each hangar door type.
Sliding doors
Most all T-hangars use sliding doors. These doors have rollers on the bottom of the door that follow a channel on the floor, typically a grove or a raise. Sliders also incorporate a guiding track at the top. Larger sliding doors are multi-panel and stack to the side. Pros for this door type include: easy to use, reliable, inexpensive, easy to repair, and strong. Cons include: open door usually slides in front of neighbors hangar, sometimes gets hung up due to debris or malfunction of lower track and roller assembly, mostly manual and heavy to push open.
Bi-fold doors
A bi-fold door folds in half horizontally and then raises up vertically, powered by an electric motor and lifted by cables. The bi-fold door is one of the oldest powered door designs and they work quite well if you get a quality product. Pros include: all electric operation, very strong, quite reliable. Cons include: somewhat high cost, and difficult to operate and open if a malfunction occurs.
Overhead doors
Overhead doors are like bi-fold doors except they don't fold vertically in the middle. They move in the same fashion as a typical overhead found on a residential garage. Generally an overhead door is lifted with a counterweight that is attached to the door by cables and an electric motor is used for movement. Pros and cons are similar to a bi-fold door.
Stack doors
Stack doors are constructed of vertically folding fiberglass skinned panels that are connected with hinges, feature a truck roller assembly on the bottom and guide rollers on top. Stack doors are opened by pushing each set of panels to the side of the hangar, were the doors neatly
"stack up" in an accordion fashion. Pros of the stack door include: quick and easy to install, easy to open. Cons are: complexity of bottom truck roller system, must be operated manually (pushed), and not as strong as some other designs in sever weather conditions.
Side-wall stacking doors
Side wall stacking doors (also called hanging doors or curtain doors) are similar to conventional stack doors except they are suspended from a top roller and track assembly goes across the front of the hangar and curves around the front inside corner of the hangar and continues parallel to the sidewalls, inside the hangar. Pros of hanging doors include: very low cost, simple to open, good for small hangars. Cons include: difficult to open when they bind up (often), space and storage on the sidewalls of the hangar, and not as strong as other designs in sever weather conditions.
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