On Mon, 25 Feb 2008 01:34:10 -0800, "Roger Shoaf"
wrote:

Standard garage door openers come in two types, a chain drive and a screw
drive.

If you can figure out how to mount the head of the unit sideways and some
way to couple the door to a drive screw or a bicycle chain the standard
opener should work, but it will not be an easy install.

The commercial sliding gate openers I have seen have a bicycle chain setup
where the chain is strung along the bottom of the gate and the opener drives
a sprocket.

The problems I see with a sliding garage door is that the doors slide past
each other, and there is not a lot of room to rig an opener.

There are security gates for neighborhoods that open sideways. The
gages are often lightweight but probably not always. I suppose the
brand names are right on the mechanism. They might make a cheaper
version for homes too.