What to do if your Antioch garage door opener is possessed

Some of us are old enough to remember 1982 when the movie “Poltergeist” was playing at the Antioch Theater. Or, maybe you’re younger and you went to see “The Conjuring” in 2013. Whichever haunted movie you prefer, you probably shrieked with delight when the movie’s specters began moving things mysteriously through the air. It’s not as much fun, however, when apparitions apparently take control at your house, such as when your garage door opener seems to have a mind of its own.

Yes, it’s possible that your Antioch garage door opener is possessed. It goes up even though you haven’t pressed the button and asked it to. You find it open in the morning knowing full well it was shut the night before. Or, as you begin driving into the garage, the garage door opener suddenly decides to close. It gives every indication that phantom spirits are in control. But, whether you believe in ghosts or not, there are other possible explanations.

What, other than a ghost, could cause your garage door opener to act irrationally? Here are some considerations:

• You could have a problem with your garage door opener’s wiring. Rather then poltergeist, this could be the result of other entities living in your garage, such as mice. Mice can chew through the wires, or partially chew through the wires. Whether mice are the cause of your garage door opener’s wiring issues, this problem can cause ghostly self-operation of the garage door.
• You can also have a problem with the circuit board in your garage door opener. As with almost everything else electronic these days, garage door openers have circuit boards to assist with operation. But, if there’s a problem with the circuit board, odd things can happen with your garage door.
• Your controller can also have issues, whether you have a more traditional controller or if you’re using your cell phone to operate your garage door.
• The sensors at the floor could be out of alignment causing erratic behavior with your garage door opener.
• Your neighbors could have their wireless controller set to the same code as your garage door opener.
• You could have a practical joker afoot. 

Whatever the problem with the garage door opener in your Antioch garage, you may want to call a qualified garage door technician to take a look at it. If that doesn’t work, well, you can always call a paranormal investigator or exorcist.

Is the rubber supple and strong at the bottom of your Park City garage door?

Your garage door goes up. Your garage door goes down. But, when your garage door goes down, does it have an effective rubber strip at the bottom to seal with the concrete entryway to your Park City garage?

Garage doors are designed to have a weather strip at the bottom of the garage door. On the one hand, it absorbs the shock when the garage door hits the pavement. On the other hand, it seals out some of the cold, rain and snow from coming into

the garage.

Let’s suppose you’re out in the garage one Saturday during this upcoming Park City winter. Outside, it’s cold. It’s snowing. The snow is blowing. And if you don’t have a good weather strip at the bottom of your garage door, there’s a good chance the snow is blowing under your garage door.

A rubber weather strip is attached to the bottom of your garage door before it’s installed. In other words, it’s there from the beginning.

New rubber is soft and supple. It flexes well. It rebounds when the garage door comes down to the concrete. But, rubber is a petroleum-based product. Over time, the petroleum degrades. Adverse weather conditions, such as those that are common around Park City, spur along the degradation of the weather strip at the bottom of your garage door.

In time, the weather strip is no longer soft and supple. In time, it becomes hard and rigid. Then, it cracks. Its useful time is passed.

The solution is to replace the weather strip at the bottom of your garage door with a new weather strip. Your new weather strip will be soft and supple again, and ready to keep those Park City winter conditions outside of your garage.

Garage door and garage door opener maintenance is critical when you don’t have elves standing by to help

In days gone by, there was a hinged-double-barn door. But, the Big Guy tries to keep up with advancements in technology. And, so, 30 or 40 years ago, he had an overhead garage door installed. Ten years later he updated that with an automatic garage door opener.

This made things much easier. It was a very good idea because, on that one night each year when he uses the garage door, he is very, very busy. He doesn’t have time to waste.

Imagine if you had to circumnavigate the globe, stopping at millions and millions of homes and, at each home, sliding down the chimney with toys for boys and girls to leave under the tree, and all in one night. Clearly, every second counts. Knowing that the door will open when called upon is vital.

Only using the door once each year means that there isn’t the usual wear and tear experienced by most garage doors and garage door openers that are going up and down with frequency throughout the year. However, the conditions by the Big Guy’s place more than make up for the disparity in use. In the winter, the temperature outside his place averages 40 degrees below zero. That’s cold – really, really cold. And then there are the extremes when it can get much colder.

These extremes are very hard on the mechanics of a garage door and garage door opener. The cold effects the lubricants that are used to protect and assist garage door hinges. Of course, the elf who maintains the garage door for the Big Guy uses a special lubricant designed to withstand such extreme lows. But, the cold still plays havoc on the garage door and garage door opener.

Then there is the wind and the snow. The wind often blows so hard up here that the snow seems to find the smallest crack to invade the interior of the Big Guy’s place. Another elf spends all his time identifying and sealing leaks. He is an expert in the installation of caulk and rubber weather stripping. But, the bitterly cold wind is so persistent that his work is never really done.

The good news is that, on that one night, while the Big Guy is loading toys in his Soaring Levitation  Express Delivery system (S.L.E.D), the garage door elves are checking the garage door and garage door opener and checking it twice. If there is a problem, once the Big Guy hooks up the Hooved Drive System and hits the button to open the garage door, the elves are standing by to quickly address any problem.

Few of us have garage doors and garage door openers that have to endure the kinds of temperatures that the Big Guy’s garage door and garage door opener endures. But, even fewer of us have garage door technicians standing by every time we use our garage doors. This makes it imperative that we do timely maintenance with our garage doors and garage door openers so they will work when we need them to work.

Of course, millions of boys and girls aren’t depending on our garage doors and garage door openers to work the way they are with the Big Guy and his garage door and garage door opener.

Army can interrupt garage door opener signals but Ingleside residents don’t have to worry

Lack of proper garage door maintenance is a far-more likely cause if you have problems

A story in a Savannah, GA, newspaper, from a few years ago, discussed a local problem for residents of the Ardsley Park area. Apparently, US Army radio signals were interfering with the operation of garage door openers for area residents.

The military installation to blame was the Hunter Army Airfield. They had upgraded equipment on a radio tower to produce a stronger signal. By chance, the signal transmits on the same frequency as garage door openers.

When the Army turned the transmitters on they started to receive calls from residents in Ardsley Park and as far north as Godonston and as far south as Bryan County. This means that the transmitter was making itself ‘heard,’ so to speak, for miles around. Of course, Hunter Army Airfield is 964 miles from Chicago. Once again, there’s nothing to worry about in Ingleside where your garage door opener will stop working because of the Army’s transmitter.

While military interference isn’t a real concern unless Great Lakes Naval Base adds a new and more powerful transmitter. Still, Great Lakes Naval Base is 20 miles away from Ingleside. But, there are other things that could interfere with the operation of your garage door opener.

You could kick a photosensor for your garage door opener out of position and cause a problem. Or, you could fail to properly maintain your garage door opener, and garage door, and you’ll have trouble.

In reality, it’s far more likely that a lack of maintenance will cause a problem with your Ingleside garage door opener than the US Army. But, you have far more control of avoiding a problem with your garage door opener in the prior case. If you do a good job of maintaining your garage door opener, it should work and keep working. And, if it doesn’t, you won’t be able to blame the U.S. military.

Hinges keep your garage door going up and down

Lubrication keeps your garage door hinges happy

Hinges play an important but almost invisible role in our lives. We don’t think about it but hinges are everywhere. You’ll almost never open a door to walk through a doorway without using several hinges. When you get in and out of the car, you’re using hinges. And, when you open or close your paneled garage door, you’re using as many as 15 hinges or more.

When you open a cabinet in the kitchen, you use hinges. When you open the door to the refrigerator, the washer, dryer or dishwasher, you’re using hinges. There are even hinges on many beer tappers – not all, but many.

Hinges help things pivot. They allow cabinets and doors to swing open. With beer tappers, well, they allow the beer to flow. With a garage door, hinges help the panels of your garage door to roll up and over the turn in the tracks on either side of the door, or down around the bend.

The thing with hinges is that most of them are made of metal and metal can rust. You don’t worry about your kitchen cabinet hinges rusting. They’re indoors and safely protected from the elements of the weather. But, garage door hinges, even though they’re on the inside of the garage door, are not insulated as completely from the elements.

Over time, garage door hinges will gain the brown patina of rust. Rust on the outside of a hinge isn’t such a big problem but there’s no guarantee that the rust won’t work its way inside the hinge. Inside the hinge, it’s metal against metal. A metal pin rotates inside of clasps on either side of the hinge. Rust buildup inside the hinge impedes that movement.

With enough rust, a hinge will cease to rotate. Your hinge will freeze up – lock up – stop working. At a certain point, the hinge is behind hope. Rust has won the battle and the only solution is to replace the hinge. Caught early enough, you can save a hinge by applying a liberal amount of an appropriate lubricant. That lubricant, however, isn’t just for repair of a rusty hinge; it also helps to protect a hinge before rust has a chance to take hold.

Have you ever opened a door with rusty hinges? What was it like? You had to apply substantial additional force to get the door to move, didn’t you? The same is true with a garage door; if the hinges are rusty your garage door opener has to work like the Dickens to get your garage door to open. It puts a lot of strain on the garage door opener and all its components.

With rusty hinges, you can expect your garage door opener to wear out sooner. You can expect parts of your garage door opener system to break. The solution is lubrication. Lubrication is an extremely cost-effective way to extend the life of your garage door and garage door opener. Lubrication is the elixir of life for your garage door hinges.

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.