Were your Antioch garage door sensors knocked out of alignment?

Quiet as mice, the sensors stand sentry on either side of your Antioch garage door. They’re ready to leap into action whenever called upon. They’re there to protect you, your loved ones, your dog and your possessions.

Garage door sensors quietly project laser beams across the opening to your garage door so that the garage door won’t come down on an unsuspecting child, pet or your car. When the laser is broken, while the garage door is in motion, it instantly stops the garage door in its tracks.

You don’t see the laser. You probably don’t even notice the sensors. But they’re still there doing their job, well, unless …

To perform their duty, garage door sensors need to cooperate effectively. This means that the laser beam has to be precisely aimed to complete the circuit between the two sensors. The sensors are mounted near the floor on either side of your Antioch garage door. They are wired to the garage door opener so that, when the laser beam is broken, they tell the garage door opener to stop.

What if the sensors are not properly adjusted? No doubt, when they were installed, they were adjusted so the laser beam communicated between the two sensors. But since then, well, things can happen.

Suppose you’re rearraigning things in the garage. You don’t even realize it when a box your moving pushes against another box that is up against one of the sensors. With no idea that it has happened, you’ve knocked one of the sensors out of alignment. The beam will no longer complete its circuit between the two sensors. The safety measure is no longer working.

Maybe you were sweeping leaves out of the garage in the fall or shoveling snow in the winter and bumped the sensor. The sensor are fairly solidly mounted by you can still knock them out of whack. Maybe you simply kicked one of the sensors by accident one day.

Whatever happened, if the sensors are no longer precisely aligned, you’ll have trouble with your garage door.

Sensors also can get dirty, which can also affect their operation. If you decide to clean the lenses on the sensors, be sure to do so gently so that, while cleaning them, you don’t move them. But you may want to call in a professional to check that the sensors are properly aligned and operating at peak performance. 

If you call a garage door technician out to perform annual maintenance on your Antioch garage door, one of the tasks they’ll perform is checking the sensors.

Did you garage door survive this Salem winter okay or do you need a new garage door

Your garage door has survived how many Salem winters? What’s one more? But did your garage door truly survive the recently passed winter?

How does your garage door look? If there are stains on the garage door from dirty, salt-filled snow, you can wash that off. But you may find that winter has done more than that to the garage door at your Salem home.

For starters, there’s a good chance that winter has dried out the weather stripping around and at the bottom of your garage door. Fortunately, you can replace that without having to replace the entire garage door.

How did the rollers, springs and tracks make out with this most recent winter? If you’ve had annual maintenance performed on your garage door and garage door opener, the answer may be ‘Not too bad.’ But if you seldom maintain your garage door, you may not enjoy the answer to that question.

If your garage door and garage door opener are okay following this recently passed winter, that’s great. Now is a good time to do some maintenance to refresh, adjust and lubricate your garage door from the effects of winter and prepare it for the summer ahead. But what if the damage is more than maintenance can reasonably address?

How do the garage door panels look? Just as winter will dry out the rubber of the weather stripping around your garage, winter will also dry out the panels of your garage door, particularly, but not exclusively, if you have a wooden garage door.

If the panels aren’t bad, you may want to consider going beyond cleaning the garage door. You may want to paint, stain and/or seal the panels of your garage door. Of course, that depends on whether they are worth saving.

If the panels have taken too much of a beating from too many winters, you may need to replace a panel or two, if that’s reasonable. Of course, if the garage door is that bad, you may find it’s time to replace the entire garage door.

How about the mechanics of the garage door – the rollers, hinges, tracks and springs? Are they in reasonably good shape? If not, can they be brought back up to par? 

Then there’s the garage door opener. Does it need some adjustment and lubrication or is it just getting a bit tired after a few too many winters?

It’s a good idea to call a professional out to do some post-winter maintenance on your Salem garage door. While they’re there, they can give your garage door and garage door opener the once over to let you know what kind of shape it’s in. Just make sure it’s someone you can trust and not someone who’s a little too happy to sell you a new garage door.