# Best Ways To Secure Flat Panel Facade To House?



## Terrormaster (Sep 27, 2007)

Greetings all. I'm hoping the weather this year is conducive to putting out my facade panels in front of the garage. I was only able to use them in 2010 so far. The last three years have been either a bust due to weather conditions or time constraints.









_2010 Panel Setup_

I've since removed the piping to go with a plain stone look.

In 2010 I opened both garage bays and chained the center and both end panels to the door rails to keep them from falling over. This worked out pretty good. But it forces me to keep the bay doors open and thus not being able to close and secure my garage. That in turn forces me to have to wait until 10/31 to put them out and then take them down that night.

Since I'm a renter and my landlord specifically made sure we wouldn't be securing things directly to the house when we signed the lease back in 2010 my options are limited. I'm looking for a way to secure the panels that doesn't involve bolting or nailing anything to the structure of the house yet allows me to safely close by garage door at night if I want to set up a couple days earlier.

Any help would, as always, be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
-TM


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## Abunai (Oct 28, 2007)

You need to think outside of the box.

Instead of looking for a way to secure the facade without having the garage doors open, look for a way to safely leave the garage doors open.
I would suggest a large salt-water tank in your garage with sharks; sharks with lasers mounted on their heads. They'll keep your garage safe.


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## Haunted Spider (Sep 6, 2010)

Why attach them to the house at all? Why not build it to sit 3 feet in front of your home and have bracing on the back that supports and keeps it upright. Panels could then be moved out the way from the garage door when needed. Or just don't park in the garage for 3 days.


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## Terrormaster (Sep 27, 2007)

@Haunted Spider: I thought about maybe doing braces but it gets tricky because my driveway has a slight incline so I'd have to anchor the backs in some way so that a wind gust doesn't tip them forward on to a ToT or something. Parking in the garage isn't an issue because we only have one vehicle and its never ever in the garage. The issue is unwanted guests, human or animal, entering the garage in the interim - especially the former since the garage connects right to the house.


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## DocK (Apr 1, 2013)

How about tie-wrapping it to the gutters???


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## Terrormaster (Sep 27, 2007)

No gutters on right and front sides.


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## Haunted Spider (Sep 6, 2010)

You can weight down the braces with sand bags. A sandbag at home depot is 4 dollars. You could also drill a hole into the cement and set a cement anchor through the brace. I don't think the owner would notice a 3/16th inch hole in the driveway. 

Also, put a brace on the front and make it into something so it doesn't look like a brace, like box it in to look like crates or put a coffin standing up there too. 

Just a few thoughts to get your mind going


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## drevilstein (Sep 17, 2013)

maybe attach straps to the façade and clamp somewhere to the garage door or sides of house, or to the ground if there is room on both sides of garage


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## Terrormaster (Sep 27, 2007)

I don't have any photos (at work) so I drew a couple quick diagrams to show what I need to do.

Here's is the garage front... Pretty standard fare:










And here's how I want to mount the panels this year:










There are three 4x8 panels, one 4x3 panel, one 2x8 panel, and one 4x5 panel. Front left to right it's: 4x3, 8x4 (4x8 sideways), 4x8, 2x8 (archway), 4x8, 4x5.

I figure I can easily anchor the two ends using fish-eye hooks, rope, and dog leash spikes. It's that center 4x8 that bugs me.


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## fontgeek (Jul 24, 2006)

How tightly does the top edge of the garage door seal when it's closed?
Putting eyebolt or screws into the back of your facade and using bungee cords that would go over the top of the door and hook onto the typical metal bar that runs across garage doors, or into eye screws on the inner side of the garage door or the framing, with the other end hooked to the eyebolts or eye-screws on the back of the facade. While you could use rope or chain, bungee cords, because of their elastic nature, will have enough give to keep them from just snapping or breaking apart your facade with the first bit of wind, and they will keep the facade snug against the garage or bracing. Using sandbags as well is a good idea, all of these solutions, shy of the sharks with the lasers, are in expensive enough and fast enough to keep this a fairly easy project.
Can you give us a side view of the garage or building this would be standing in front of?


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## Terrormaster (Sep 27, 2007)

Brilliant fontgeek, the bungee cord idea looks like it will work. The right bay has a manual door which we generally don't open very often (it WILL be the one open on Halloween). I saw that it had enough space to pass the rope through. The test would be on the electronic door on the left because it looked snug but gave a bit in that corner when the door was closed. I took some of the rope I had laying around the garage (1/4 inch nylon kinda stuff) and looped it around the center column at the very top while the left door was open. Then ran the door completely up and down a few time with the remote to make sure the rope didn't interfere with anything. It worked PERFECT. When I put the walls up in October I'll use bungee instead for reasons you stated. But my tests were satisfactory. Simple and elegant. The only changes to the wall panel I need to make is mounting a fisheye hook on the top support to pass the bungee through.


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## Abunai (Oct 28, 2007)

Terrormaster said:


> Brilliant fontgeek, the bungee cord idea looks like it will work.


This forum is awesome.


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