Photosensors keep an eye out to open your garage door

Their eyes are locked but it’s not exactly romantic. On either side of your garage door, just above the ground, you’ll find them mounted on the backside of the tracks that guide your garage door on its journeys up and down. These are photosensors and their eyes are locked on one another for a very good reason.

Photosensors represent a safety feature provided with your garage door and garage door opener. Not only are they gazing into each-others eyes, they are ready to respond if anyone interrupts their gaze.

Running between the photosensors is an infra-red beam, similar to the infra-red beam you probably saw in one-or-more episodes of Mission Impossible. With the infra-red beams in the movies, as well as employed for actual security systems, if the gaze of the beam is broken, an alarm begins to ring, steel doors slam shut so the perpetrators can’t get away.

The infra-red beam between the photosensors at the bottom of your garage door generally don’t operate the same kind of equipment. Nothing nearly as exciting will happen if the beam between the garage door photosensors is broken. Instead of an alarm, the door simply stops.

When the infra-red beam between garage door photosensors is interrupted, the power to the motor of your garage door opener is cutoff. The motor stops running the garage door stops moving.

The purpose of the photosensors and their infra-red beam is to ensure that the door doesn’t come down on your car or other toys or equipment in the way of the door. It’s also to ensure that the garage door doesn’t come down on you or a loved one.

Even if it isn’t a loved one who is saved by your photosensors and their infra-red beam, the safety is a great feature with your garage door and garage door opener to protect friends who come to visit, too. The federal government agrees. The feds actually mandate garage door companies to install safety features, such as photo sensors, when your garage door and/or garage door opener is installed.

It’s not as exciting a security system as the one built around the Crown Jewels of England, but it is effective for keeping your garage door operating properly.

Lubrication is a friend to your Lake Zurich garage door and garage door opener

Rust has a rich texture that is warm and appealing in many decorative applications. It’s rustic. It’s unique. It’s suggestive of age and endurance. Rust, however, is the enemy of most garage doors, unless you have a heavy, rusted-iron garage that serves a decorative purpose as well as providing a way to close your Lake Zurich garage door.

Rust, in most of its forms, is an inhibitor of the smooth operation of equipment, and that includes your garage door.

Have you looked at the tracks on either side of your Lake Zurich garage door lately? Originally, if the technician who installed your garage door knew what they were doing, those tracks were well lubricated. This ensured that the rollers attached to your garage door panels had a path they could easily roll in while going up and down.

You also want lubricated rollers. These are constructed of pins, that fit into tubes on the inside of the garage door panels, and roller bearings that ride in the track. From the bearings to the pins, lubrication is essential.

Other parts of the garage door that beg for lubrication are the hinges. These are not asked to rotate the way the rollers do but they can still add a creak to your door’s operation and make the garage door opener work harder. Even if your muscles are called upon as the ‘garage door opener,’ lubricated hinges will make the job easier.

Whether your garage door opener operates with a chain drive or a screw drive, lubrication is an absolute necessity. The same holds true of garage door pulleys. Even the torsion spring can do with a good lubrication, from time to time.

Lubrication inhibits the rust that would inhibit the smooth operation of the garage door. It quiets – seriously quiets – the operation of your garage door. And, while lubrication reduces the strain on your Lake Zurich garage door opener, it also extends the life of your garage door, garage door parts, and your garage door opener.

What parts of your Spring Grove garage door are most likely to break?

If you maintain your Spring Grove garage door properly, you can expect to receive years and years of service without major issues. But, mechanical items, such as garage doors and garage door openers, do break. It’s a matter of time and use. The way to delay the inevitable garage breakage is to properly maintain your garage door.

What parts of your garage door are liable to break? Let’s say you’re leaving your Spring Grove home to do some shopping and, halfway up, the door jams. What would cause that problem?

There are a number of possible answers to that question. So, let’s take a look at the parts of a garage door system that break most often:

• The garage door opener breaks: There is a small electrical motor inside that garage door opener. There are springs, bearings, and gears. Sometimes, there is also a drive belt. Eventually, the garage door opener, or one of its parts, will break. However, if you lubricate the garage door hinges and bearings, you can reduce the load on the garage door opener and extend its life.
• Garage door cables break: The cables that lift your garage door are about 1/8th-inch thick. They carry a heavy load and they are used often. It’s a darn good thing they’re made of aircraft-quality cable, the wear and tear will take its toll and they can break. Once again, lightening the load by greasing hinges and bearings will help.
• Garage door rollers can break: The rollers are found traveling up and down the tracks on both sides of the garage door. A good-quality set of rollers will last a long time, especially if you lubricate them with sufficient frequency. Unfortunately, the rollers that come with garage doors are often of inferior quality.
• Garage door springs break: These springs are under so much tension that only a qualified garage door technician should work with them. People have lost fingers, hands and lives trying to replace their garage door springs when they didn’t have the experience required for the job. A spring under that much tension WILL break, eventually. Once again (I know – this is getting redundant), lubricating hinges and bearings will lighten the load on the springs.
• Garage door hinges can break: Garage door hinges can break by coming apart. They can also fail by rusting in place so they won’t turn as designed. You guessed it – lubricating them and they’ll last a lot longer (and all those other parts will appreciate it).

You probably use the garage door and garage door opener in your Spring Grove garage more often than you think about. It can work so reliably that you’ll virtually forget it is there. Then, when it breaks, you’ll remember when you probably don’t have time to deal with a broken garage door. But, maintain it properly and you probably won’t have to think about it too much for quite some time.

Invitation to the wrong sort – Woodstock garage door stuck halfway open

It’s not convenient when your Woodstock garage door stops halfway up. In fact, it’s down-right inconvenient.

You’re in a hurry – places to go and things to do. You rush out to the garage and climb into the car while your mind runs through your to-do list for the 500th time. You hit the button for the remote garage door opener and you hear that familiar sound of the door going up. You start the car and, with your foot on the brake, you put the car in reverse. You’re ready to back out of the garage and … wait a minute. Something is wrong?

What’s wrong is that your garage door has stopped halfway up. If you back out now you’ll rip the garage door of the track and break the door panel into pieces, not to mention the damage to the springs and other parts of the garage door and garage door opener.

Woodstock is a great place to live – The Square, nice neighbors, not too far from work and things to see and do. But, you still wouldn’t want to leave your doors wide open. From time to time, someone may drive, or stroll, down your street who is not that nice. And if your garage door is stuck halfway open, that’s an invitation to the occasional nefarious character who might happen by.

If the garage door is stuck halfway open, you might try to fix it yourself. However, this will require working from a ladder and knowing how to identify the limit switch adjustment, for a start. Adjusting the ‘down’ adjustment may solve the problem. Then again, it may not.

You may have to go up and down the ladder several times to find the sweet spot where the garage door works again. In the process, you may overheat the motor in the garage door opener. This isn’t necessarily catastrophic – if you leave it alone for 15 minutes, or so, it should work again.

You can also lubricate the hinges and the bearings in the track. This is part of the standard process of garage door maintenance, but there’s no guarantee this will work either.

You can also look for debris that is blocking the door’s safety eyes. But, what you don’t want to do is walk away with your Woodstock garage door stuck halfway open.

Did Grayslake flooding damage your garage door?

Photo Courtesy of Kim Kreml with Planification Group

These flood waters filled the streets in Grayslake recently and
you can bet they damaged some of the garages and garage doors
in town, as well as other Grayslake property.

The flooding in Grayslake recently has created havoc, inconvenience and expense for many home and business owners in the area. Basements were flooded and, often, the water didn’t stop there. The clean up is a painful and, in many cases, the pain hasn’t stopped. Unfortunately, you may have more pain to face; you may discover that the flooding damaged your garage door, too.

If your garage door is made of wood, the wood panels may have soaked up the water and now they’re soft and enlarged. You may notice the panels separating. Sometimes, you’ll notice unpainted areas around the inner panels. This is a sign that the panels are coming apart. If this is the case, chances are, you’ll have to replace the damaged panels.

If your garage doors are made of vinyl, or some other water impervious material, you may not have to worry about having to replace panels. However, these panels are often insulated and the Grayslake flooding may have ruined the insulation in your garage door panels.

Another problem is the havoc the flood waters may have created with the garage door hinges and roller bearings. These are parts that should pivot or roll with ease. This is why garage door maintenance includes lubricating the hinges and roller bearings. But, following the flooding, you may find that your hinges and roller bearings are rusting.

Instead of pivoting or rolling with ease, the rust makes them hang up and fight against normal usage. As a result, your garage door may put substantial additional strain on the garage door opener motor, chain and springs. Though your garage door may open and close, in spite of rust in the hinges or roller bearings, with the motor and other parts working harder, those parts may experience excessive wear and could breakdown sooner.

The flood waters may also have damaged the sensors by the floor affecting the operation of your garage door (before you jump to this conclusion, however, make sure that the sensors and clean and properly adjusted).

The floods that hit Grayslake may have damaged your garage door. The flood waters may have damaged the insulation and walls of your garage, too. Whatever the case, while you’re determining how much damage the floods have done at your home or office, don’t neglect to look at the garage, too.

The amazing garage door opener – as much as you use your Wildwood garage door opener, you bet it needs maintenance

Have you ever stopped to think about how many times your Wildwood garage door will go up and down? If you park your car in the garage, which is one of the primary uses for a garage, you probably use the garage door opener at least twice each day. That’s up twice and down twice. But, on weekends, when you’re busy running to and from stores, taking the children to soccer and football practice, and to ballet lessons, you’ll use it more than that. Then, in the evening, up and down it goes, a couple more times, while you finally relax with dinner and a show.

If you and your spouse both use the garage, the normal up-and-down usage can easily double. Let’s say that, on average, you operate your garage door three times each day, taking into account weekends and everything. This is probably a modest number. Also, by operating the garage door, we mean one trip up and one trip down equals one full operation.

Using this, admittedly arbitrary formula, you’ll operate your garage door 1,095 times in a year. That’s 1,095 trips up and 1,095 trips down or 2,190 trips altogether.

Your garage door runs on wheels and bearings that fit inside tracks on either side of the door. A pulley and cable, torsion spring, hinges and a curved door arm are essential parts of your garage door and garage door opener. And the entire assembly is suspended from the ceiling and front wall of your garage.

Some garage door openers have direct-drive mechanisms. Others have belts. But, whatever the case, the operation of your garage door and garage door opener puts wear and strain on the system. To imagine that it doesn’t require maintenance runs counter to logic, the way a single leaf might fight its way into a gale-force wind.

In spite of this obvious common sense, some of your neighbors may allow their garage doors and garage door openers to go for years without any maintenance. These people might tell say: “Maintenance? What maintenance? My garage door and garage door opener don’t need no stinkin’ maintenance.”

OK. But, the next time you’re in their Wildwood garage, take a look at their garage doors and garage door openers. Look at the tracks, the roller bearings, the hinges. In fact, give the entire garage door and garage door opener a thorough overview. Now, compare it to your well-maintained garage door and garage door opener.

After comparing the two, which garage door and garage door opener do you think will fail first? And, who is more likely to need the services of a garage door repair service?

Tips for not hitting the garage with your car

It’s late and you’re in a hurry. You jump in the car and start backing out. Suddenly, you hear a scrapping noise and realize you’ve rubbed the car against the garage door opening. You pull forward again and, with your heart in your throat, jump out to survey the damage.

There it is – a big scrape along the side of the car. Just when you’re thinking how bad this is – how much it will cost to fix your car – you notice that the you’ve also damaged the opening around the garage door.

Of course, this has happened many, many times before. Drivers have hit the side of the garage door opening, they’ve hit the garage door before it was all the way up, whether pulling in or out, they’ve hit objects in the garage and they’ve pulled too far forward running the car into the back wall of the garage. But, what can you do to avoid these kinds of problems?

Avoid pulling into the garage door. The best defense to avoid hitting the garage door before it is opened is patience. Of course, when you’re in a hurry, it’s sometimes difficult to remember to be patient. When leaving the garage, you can make a habit of waiting until the garage door is all the way up before you start the car.

You can also mount a small bump on the ground outside of the garage so you know when the front or back of the car is approaching the point where either bumper intersects with the path of the garage door. Park the car one way and hold a level upright at the point closest to the garage door but short of the path of the garage door. Mark that spot on the ground. Then turn the car around and do the same thing. Glue or mount the bump on the pavement at the furthest of these two points from the door.

To avoid scrapping the side of the door while coming in or out, you can mount a piece of pipe-insulation foam so that it extends into the garage from both sides. Mount a short piece of pipe off the wall beside the garage door opening perpendicular to the floor and facing the garage door opening but keep it back further than the opening. Then, pull the car into the garage door opening so that it is as close to centered as possible. Measure from both sides and attach a piece of foam insulation on the pipe on both sides so they just touch the car. You might even wrap some reflective tape on the insulation so you’ll see them easier in the dark.

To keep from hitting the back wall of the garage, pull the car in to the distance you usually park. On a piece of string, hang a tennis ball so that it just touches the windshield. You should then notice hitting the ball when pulling into the garage and know that it’s time to stop.

Another simple tip is to use your headlights when you’re in the garage or pulling into the garage. The better you can see around you the less chance you’ll hit something.