The horizontal rolling door design is very simple to look at; it’s a single or set of vertical leaves moving horizontally on steel tracks. Now imagine there’s considerations such as the number of tracks, or number of door leaves and motors that will impact your building design, budget costs, and the success or failure of the door when people begin using it day to day.

In this article we’ve provided a video example for each of the 4 hangar door configurations available on horizontal rolling doors and hope it provides ignition to the design of your next aircraft hangar, dry storage or commercial building.

Here’s what we cover:

Bi-Parting Door Configuration

  • Requires a minimum of 2-door leaves.
  • Requires pocket on each side of the opening or outriggers
  • Can be manual or motorized.

Traditionally a biparting door has an equal number of door leaves, and when the door opens half will slide into a pocket on the left, and half into a pocket on the right.

If your building isn’t wide enough for a pocket, you can look at another door configuration we offer called dual slide or another one called group movement. You can also look at our Outrigger Design Options article explaining ways to improve existing aircraft hangars with limited space.

There’s no limit to how many door leaves you can have in a biparting configuration. In our video we use 4-leaves on 2 tracks, but a biparting door can be 2-leaves, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, etc..

The bottom rail and top guide rails are typically spaced 14 to 18 inches on the center. Check the architects section of our website for preliminary drawings. Or contact us for the most accurate dimensions and honest advice.

Unidirectional Door Configuration

(Also known as one way, single slide)

  • Requires a minimum of 1-door leaf.
  • Requires a pocket on one side of the opening or outrigger.
  • Can be manual or motorized.

In this door configuration the door leaf or leaves all move to a pocket on one side of the opening.

If your building isn’t wide enough for a pocket, you can look at another door configuration we offer called dual slide or another one called group movement. Our Outrigger Design Options article explains features for improving hangars with limited space.

In our video we use 4-leaves on 4 tracks, but a unidirectional door can be as few as 1 leaf or as many as you need.

The bottom rail and top guide rails are typically spaced 14 to 18 inches on the center. Check the architects section of our website for preliminary drawings. Or contact us for the most accurate dimensions and honest advice.

Floating Group Movement

(Also known as stacking groups)

  • Requires a minimum of 2-door leaves
  • No pocket space required to the left or right of the opening.
  • Must be motorized.

In this configuration you have 1 or more groups of interconnected door leaves that can be operated from the first or last leaf. They can also be stacked together and moved as a group. This is an ideal configuration for very large door openings.

For hangers that are too wide for one 1 group, we offer 2 groups or more. A video of group movement using 2 groups is below.

The bottom rail and top guide rails are typically spaced 14 to 18 inches on the center. Check the architects section of our website for preliminary drawings. Or contact us for the most accurate dimensions and honest advice.

View PDF – Group Movement Hangar Door Specifications, free to use.

Independent Operation

(Also known as; individual door operation)

  • No pocket space required to the left or right of the opening.

In this configuration each door leaf has its own motor and control panel. The operator can move a single door leaf independent of the other door leaves.

In the video we used 4 leaves on 4 rails, and later 4 leaves on 2 rails. This is just two examples of the ways independent configuration can be installed on an aircraft hangar.

The bottom rail and top guide rails are typically spaced 14 to 18 inches on the center. Check the architects section of our website for preliminary drawings. Or contact us for the most accurate dimensions and honest advice.

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Paul Blake Author
Director of Sales , View My Profile

Paul has over 14-years of sales and marketing experience in the hangar door industry. Prior to this, Paul spent 8 years working in a sales division of Apple Inc, where skills in supply chain, selling and customer service were taught at a multinational level.