Header for new patio door

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maritadavis

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We have a garage attached to our house, but no doorway into it. We want to put a patio door in but discovered that the garage floor is 20 inches below the housefloor. In the garage, the height from the concrete floor to the rafters is only 100 inches, thus there would only be 80 inches left for a door, and this is the smallest rough opening for standard doors that I've been able to find. Marvin windows can make me a custom door of 6 foot 1 that would leave me about 4 inches for a header. Would a 4-inch I-beam be enough to support the load above a five-foot wide opening?

Yes, I realize that people will be bumping their heads but the house has such an odd design, it's all we can manage right now.
 
Welcome to the Forum, Marita Davis:
If I understand your situation correctly, there should be an open wall on the house above the garage roof and space above the door inside. You could cut into the wall on the inside, put cripple studs on each side of the door opening and a double 2 X 8 or 2 X 10 across the top of the opening to support the wall. Then you could use the standard door with 80" opening, OR you could cut one or two steps into the house floor and get the head space up to code. The later fix would be very labor intensive but it wouldn't cost an arm and a leg for materials.
Glenn
 
I think I understand what you're saying. Yeah, there is a wall above it. I'm printing this off and showing it to the handyman who is helping me.
 
What I discovered is that there is space on the internal wall for a header for the roof above the internal space. However, I still need support for installing a standard patio door. The height would be 80 inches, the width 60 inches. Is there anyway to find out whether an S4 x 9.5 I-beam would be strong enough to serve as the header? Is there a general rule of thumb of converting strength between I-beam headers and say, headers made by two 2x6"s.

I also have another support beam made up of 2 2x10s that spans 18 feet that I'd like to replace with an I-beam or maybe a laminate. Can anyone help me on calculating what I'd need?
 
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