I’m building a shed, and want a large single door on the end. It’s 47" wide by 74" high (roughly 4’x6’ or 120cm x 180cm), framed like a regular house door would be (header of two 2x boards with plywood sandwiched; joist and trimmer on each side). I’d like the door to avoid sagging, and also be strong enough so when kids inevitably climb on it that’s fine too.

I see lots of patterns for shed doors, for example (from secrets-of-shed-building) the zig zag, with a pair of triangles bearing weight down to the hinge edge:

zig zag shed door

Or (from artofit but are they the new pinterest or something?) the high single diagonal:

single diagonal door

Or rectangles, or exes on the lower or both halves. Does the variety mean it doesn’t really matter?

The shed has plywood sheathing, and I’m planning to have a single panel of plywood sheathing on the door, does that provide enough shear stiffness?

And I’ll probably use 2x4 framing on the back/inside of the door, maybe lap joints for fun though most people seem to just do butt joints, probbly flat against the door though I see some folks putting the 2x4s edge against the door like they’re just framing more wall.

Any experience with sagging or successful doors very welcome, or structural theory to apply here! Thanks in advance.

  • bigfish@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    24·
    15 days ago

    You’ll notice that those two examples have a different number of hinges. The two hinge door uses a single big z to get the load down to that bottom hinge. The three hinge door uses two zs, one to get the top’s half of the door’s load to the center hinge and the bottom z for the bottom half’s load. That’s really the secret, such as it is.

    For a shed door, it’ll probably be fairly heavy and exposed to weather and humidity. So it’ll swell and the weight will fluctuate through the year. I’d go with three medium to heavy duty hinges if it were me and design the door based on that. Then when one hinge inevitably fails, your door doesn’t fall off, it just squeaks for a while until you replace the faulty hinge. With the two hinge design, it could be a lot of load on that bottom hinge.

    But then, I over engineer everything I build…