Schweiss Doors

Schweiss Doors builds its doors at a plant in rural Hector, Minnesota, and dates the business to 1980, when owner Mike Schweiss built his first bifold door, a 12 by 12 foot unit for a Renville County highway shed. The company describes itself as family run. Its history page says it now designs, engineers and installs hydraulic and bifold liftstrap doors from 6 feet to 140 feet wide and up to 60 feet tall, with more than 20,000 square feet of assembly space at the headquarters. Hangar doors share the site with agricultural, commercial, architectural and designer doors.

For aviation it sells two door styles. The One-Piece hydraulic door swings out on two large cylinders with spherical bearings and a Red Power pump, forms a shaded canopy when open, and needs about 5 inches of headroom, which Schweiss pitches as a way to keep hangar sidewalls low under airport height limits. The bifold door folds upward on patented polyester lift straps with auto-latches and needs less ramp space in front of the hangar. The company cites an airfield south of Chicago that put its doors on all 132 hangars and an 80-door order for an expansion at Oshawa Airport in Ontario.

Buyers can order an installed door, a door for a local contractor to hang, or a Build Your Own Door kit of components and drawings for welders. Schweiss says it retrofits doors to existing buildings, puts a seven-year warranty on its hydraulic doors, and says door cost runs roughly in line with door height; it does not publish pricing and quotes each job with shipping. Its comparison page warns that a hydraulic door needs a marked no-parking zone in front of it and recommends windows in the door so the operator can see the swing path.