Door Barriers / Wave Protection

RiderOnTheStorm

hope this thread will spark someones interest (and I might get something out of it too!) .... a bit of brainstorming (or crowd sourcing?) ....

I am a member of a voluntary sea rescue unit, and a short while ago the doors to our boathouse was badly damaged by some big waves. We had moved a lot of equipment (and one of the boats) out of there a few days before, so apart from the sand & crap, the only damage was to the doors themselves.

I would like to invite everyone to consider & suggest ideas for new door barriers or some system of protection from freak waves.

This is what we have & what we do now:
We have 3 large roller doors, and when we know that storms are coming we erect barriers (see the pic below). These are large (heavy!) steel girders sitting on top of 4 steel pipes set into the ground. The beams are also sitting on shelves bolted to the wall. We liked this system as it can be set up & struck by 3 / 4 people, and the defences are inside our building (avoiding issue of putting defences onto public property outside on the path).

The barriers themselves seemed to stand up well to the waves. It was the doors that folded over the barrier / beams that let us down. We dont want to heighten the barrier as then its too heavy to erect manually.

Some pics ....
We have a big beach, that has gradual incline straight up to the building, and then approx 15 feet of footpath (concrete) in front of the building.




The barriers (before!)


Wild ideas:
I like this one. I think we could have barriers inside the doors, using poles to support the doors at 2 or 3 levels up the door (low, middle, high) . This means the doors get support without using very heavy beams. See pic below, but imagine a door instead of the wall.


I like these too, as they are angled, and they might go outside the building to deflect most of the force of the wave. There might be issues putting these up on public property and then they are an obstacle on the path while they are up. I was thinking also of a hinged plate in front of each door, extending from door to edge of path, with the hinge parallel to the door. We could raise the hinged part when weather is bad, and make a triangular ramp. The front part deflects the incoming wave, and the rear part is support for the front part (its like the pic below, but would have a back part same as the front)


Idea #3 (sorry for crude pic!)
A chain / train of 'rafts' (I am guessing 6feet by 6 by 1). We could drag them out one at a time, and chain them together and to large anchors at each end. The idea is that they would float when the wave comes in, and take some of the power out of it. Maybe they could be wedges, so the wave power was angled upwards?



Anyway .... thanks for reading this far! If you have any ideas, please suggest. If you have questions, please post and I will try answer them asap.

Lastly, any system should meet these few critera:
The system has to be erectable in minutes (20 max), and done by a few people (min 3)
As few moving parts as possible (and no electronics)
It does not have to be watertight, just enough to keep force of water from moving & damaging equipment inside.
If system is placed outside the building, then access for public and their safety is an issue. In my suggestion above where we have 2 hinged plates, there would be an issue with kids / dogs going under the 'tent'!

thanks in advance .... be safe!

CatFromHue

In your second pic it looks like the big roller door on the right has failed at the bottom right hand corner, is this correct?

My first thought reading through the post was that replacements for the roller doors should be looked at too.

RiderOnTheStorm

Hi Cat,

yes, the rightmost door was damaged on the bottom right. We had 4 steel poles behind each door, except that one, which only has 3. We had made 4 for it, but the 4th one lined up with a water pipe and we had to abandon it, so there are only 3 there. We didnt re-locate the other 3 poles / holes, so there is a bit of a gap there ..... and so, at the weakest point, it gave way.

The roller doors will have to be replaced, and we may get stringer ones. The edge of the doors sit in a grove / flange / track that is only a couple of inches deep. I think this is too shallow, as if the door bends a bit it can pop out of the track. Dont know what we can do about that ..... deeper tracks I guess.

If anyone wants more photos or close-ups of anything, please ask and I will get them ... got a new smartphone for Crimbo :-)

Fat Nav

The cheapest and best solution long term would be to replace the roller doors with standard hinged doors that can be secured into the ground and above as well.
If your staying with roller doors just run heavy wall box across all 3 doors just below top of the doors up tight against the doors.
Place 4 holes in each box iron corresponding to the holes in the ground you already have and instead of using your current barrier use 4 separate uprights,your barrier is now full size and can be put up by one person in 5mins handy.
Hope this helps

Turbulent Bill

I think you need some sort of breakwater in front of the doors to deflect the wave force away from them. Could you set some permanent anchors in the concrete path, then attach removable barriers (maybe snowplough shaped) into these when high waves are forecast?

Any vertical door will sustain damage in strong waves, and it doesn't take much to jam them.

RiderOnTheStorm

Fat Nav, I like the bar at top of the doors. Solves the weight issue of having very long vertical bars , and as its perm in place we dont have to lift the horiz bar up high. We will prob keep the roller doors, as we need all the height & width of the doorway to get the boat / trailer / tractor in and out.

Turbulent Bill, a wave deflector is my fav. I am not sure we can make doors strong enough to withstand all waves that will ever come. But to use the power of the sea against itself, or to deflect the water a bit upward so that it looses power is my fav. There may be issues placing something (anything) on public property. Putting something on the beach itself is out of the question. I know that not what you suggested, I am just putting it out there in case it comes up later. A wall or boulder line would ruin beach, put off tourists, and we could not launch a boat if there is a perm barrier. And, there is always a good chance that it will be covered by sand in time. We built a concrete ramp from the door out about 30 feet to the beach and the year after it was built it was covered by sand, and wasnt seen again for 15 years! (saw it for the first time myself this year!)

thx guys .... good ideas there, and I will def suggest them at the next meeting.

Anyone got any more? (sorry, getting greedy now!)

G-Man

Now if the new or existing roller door brackets where heavy enough you could somehow arrange it so the bottom leaf of the roller picks up the inside barrier as it rolls up. You could lock it up in position if you wanted too.

I really would not go with swing doors, they would be deadly in a windy situation. Perhaps a local metal shop could weld a bigger flange to the back of the vertical sliding door tracks so that it might never buckle inwards.

In the long term it might be better planning and please I am trying to be constructive here, if the building and its contents which are expected to be used in an emergency situation are not inaccessible in that same emergency.

If you are a local voluntary group and what we here about sea rising and increased wave action, should you not be thinking about moving the building, or at least getting the local council to share some of your costs for remedial action here and there best civil engineering brains would look at protecting such a community structure.... Again any beach construction does not have to be ugly. God knows you pay enough in water charges, local taxes so they should be putting some money back in here.

Lastly if it those fail, have you as much of your stuff up off the ground inside.

hughie1989

My suggestion would be a vertically folding door with a track/rail system. The track/rail would mean the doors/frames could be made beefy enough to prevent any damage during storm conditions while allowing the doors to be operated by one person. I think a relatively easy locking system could be put in place as well with this system.

Not sure on your financial situation - if you plan on changing the entire doors or if your looking for a retro fit option but if your changing, then IMO theres no point in having two systems in place when one could do!

RiderOnTheStorm

G-Man wrote: »

Now if the new or existing roller door brackets where heavy enough you could somehow arrange it so the bottom leaf of the roller picks up the inside barrier as it rolls up. You could lock it up in position if you wanted too.

Yup, we thought of this, but our current barriers are too heavy for the (relatively) small door motor. And any lighter barrier would not be able to stand up as well as the current ones.

G-Man wrote: »

In the long term it might be better planning and please I am trying to be constructive here, if the building and its contents which are expected to be used in an emergency situation are not inaccessible in that same emergency.

Could not agree more :-) Our primary concern is to always be able to respond to an emergency. In the case of extreme tide / wind situations, we aim to have enough door protection to protect boats & equipment (ie we dont want to move the boats every time there is a storm) and we want to be able to put up & take down the barriers when there is a storm.

Just to say, our doors & barriers have stood up to a lot over the years, and before the current exceptional weather, we have been very happy with them 95% of the time. We will never be able to get doors that can stand up to anything (and still suit the purpose of a rescue unit, ie be able to open quickly!) so I am looking for an improvement that we havnt thought of , that will increase 95% to 99%......without too much cost! .....not looking for a lot, eh? lol

hughie1989 wrote:

... IMO theres no point in having two systems in place when one could do!

Yea, one would be best, but we dont want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. We already have roller doors, but if there were a better alternative door, and the cost of replacement was justified, we would consider it. A system where we have basic protection (doors) but then could be ramped up with complementary system (barriers / rock-armour / snow plows / etc) would have advantages. But I know what you are saying, two systems are two possible points of failure.

thx for the input guys .... I hope I dont seem too negative ... I do appreciate the ideas! :-D