Don’t ignore a blinking light in your North Chicago garage door opener

You could close the doors so you don’t see the light blinking in your North Chicago garage door opener. If you don’t see it, is it really blinking. But, unlike a refrigerator, where there’s no to tell whether the light stays on when the door is closed, with your garage, you can stand inside the garage door and see if the light continues blinking when you lower the garage door.

You may be tempted to ignore the blinking light. After all, it’s annoying. Just close the doors and you can forget it. But you may want to consider ‘why’ the light on your North Chicago garage door opener is blinking.

Garage door openers are designed to provide warning signs if there’s a problem. A blinking light in the garage door opener is one of those signals. Now the trick is to figure out what your garage door opener is trying to tell you.

A blinking light in the garage door opener generally indicates one of two specific problems: either there is an issue with the lock button of a problem with a reversing sensor.

Check the lock button first

The lock button is on the remote control. If the lock button is depressed and engaged, a remote control will not open the garage door; the only way to open the door is to use the controller on the wall inside the garage.

This is a security feature designed to ensure that someone can’t hack into your garage with another remote control.

To fix the problem, hold the lock button for five seconds. The light should flash twice. When you see this, press the control button and it should fix the problem.

Not the lock button? Probably the safety reversing sensor

You’ll find these sensors near the floor on either side of the garage door. First, check to see that nothing is in the way blocking the light beam between the sensors. If that’s not the case, it’s possible that the sensors are out of alignment. 

Finally, it’s possible that the sensors or some other component of the garage door opener is malfunctioning. You may want to call a qualified garage door technician to take a look. What you don’t want to do is to ignore a blinking light on your North Chicago garage door opener.

Maximize the use of your garage to enhance your hobby or business

What are your hobbies and how does your garage help? Or maybe you have a business and your garage can fill a need. The point is that, whatever you do, whether working or with your free time, you might consider how your garage can provide useful storage and space.

Let’s suppose that you’re a quilter. You have plastic boxes filled with supplies for quilting. You may even have a 12-foot quilt frame that just takes up too much room in the basement or the backroom. Assuming the garage is heated, you could turn it into a very useful quilting cabin. And a shelving unit along the wall could handle most of your supplies. You could even color coordinate your storage.

Then again, you’re a hunter/fisher/outdoorsman. You’re not a run-of-the-mill enthusiast; you’re serious about your outdoor activities. A place to hang your fishing poles will not suffice. 

You could build a wall full of cubby holes for different lures and fishing equipment. For hunting, you may load your own ammo. You’ll have your loader table with shells, gunpowder and pellets stored in easy reach so, when you do load ammo, you can just roll your chair one way or the other to grab what you need.

If you’re hobby is woodworking, the garage is a woodshop made to order. You have plenty of room for your work bench, table saw, lathe, jigsaw, clamps, hand tools, work horses, and more.

If mechanics are your thing, you can turn your garage into a workshop to refurbish and old car or maintain your motorcycle. You may simply use your garage to store your fishing boat and/or snowmobiles. 

If you’re a tradesman, your garage can hold supplies and equipment. It’s a safe place to park your work truck or van so you less likely to have someone break in and steel your essential equipment.

Whatever purpose you find for your garage, if you set it up smartly, there’s a good chance it can double as the place to park your car. To do so takes planning. 

You’ll want to measure the space and have an idea of the dimensions of your vehicle, tools and equipment. You’ll want to consider items that you can store by suspending them from the rafters.

Done properly, you can dramatically increase the useful value of your garage. Of course, you’ll want to make sure that your valuables are protected and yet easily accessed. This is where your garage door and garage door opener come into play.

The key to ensuring that your garage door and garage door opener are assets to your garage is maintenance. Keep your garage door and garage door opener functioning properly and you can focus on your hobby or business.

Even 007 would have to troubleshoot the keypad if the garage door to MI6 won’t open

Thirty years ago, a keypad at the door was something you expected to see a secret agent use when entering their inner sanctum. Now, when entering your North Chicago garage, you use that keypad with hardly a thought. It’s second nature.

The day may come, however, when you’ll enter your secret code into the keypad, push the button to raise the door, and nothing will happen.

After a pause while you wait for your North Chicago garage door to do its thing, you suddenly realize it’s not responding. So you enter your passcode again, press the button, again, and wait, again. And, again, nothing happens.

How many times will you enter your passcode into your garage door keypad before you accept the reality that it’s not working and not going to work? That probably depends on the individual. Some will stubbornly try half a dozen times. Others, after three or four tries, will accept reality.

Accepting reality, however, doesn’t mean regressing back to the Dark Ages before keypads (or when keypads were used to keep people out of top-secret facilities). It means that the keypad needs to be fixed so that it will work again. That means troubleshooting to figure out what the problem is.

Troubleshooting goes beyond trying your passcode again and again. It includes the following steps:

• Replace the battery in the keypad. This is the first place to start and the easiest solution. Put a new battery in and give it a try. If that works, easy-peasy.
• Check the wiring inside the keypad. Are all the wires connected? Are they in good condition? If not, a fairly simple repair should have your keypad back in working order before you know it.
• Clean the keypad. Blow some compressed air inside the keypad. Consider cleaning the connections where the wires are secured. Wipe down the numbers on the keypad.
• Reset the PIN number on your keypad (if you punched your numbers in too many times, the garage door may have stopped working because you’ve done so too often).
• Reboot your garage door opener. This is a bit like starting over. You’re giving yourself a clean slate.

If none of these solutions have worked, it’s possible that you need a new keypad. If you can handle the installation yourself, you can pick up a new keypad at a box store. However, if you want a better quality keypad, you may want to go to a garage door supplier or bring in a garage door technician. 

That garage door technician can also help with troubleshooting, if you need their assistance. In any case, you’ll have that James Bond confidence back again the next time you use your keypad to open your North Chicago garage door.

Maintenance is critical to garage door longevity and reliability but beware of scams

The garage door and garage door opener are two mechanical components around the house that consistently come up short in terms of timely maintenance. If you maintain them properly, it will save you time, money and aggravation in the long run. But beware of scam artists who use your garage door and garage door opener to work their way into your pocketbook.

Proper garage door and garage door maintenance usually involves making some adjustments and applying proper lubricants in the right places and in the appropriate quantities. Con artists, however, may try to convince you that you need to spend money for repairs your garage door and garage door opener don’t need.

• One scam involves overstating the experience and expertise of a company that offers to perform maintenance, repairs or replacement of your garage door and/or garage door opener. Will they make the right adjustments and make them appropriately? Will they lubricate properly? Will they overestimate the need for replacement of parts, possibly including major components? You need to ensure that your garage door technician is actually a qualified professional who will do the job right and give you the benefit of actual experience and training.
• Another scam involves offering a Lifetime Warranty when that warranty may not be worth the paper it’s written on. It may turn out that the warranty only covers parts, or certain parts. Or it may turn out that, when you need to use the warranty, the company that installed your garage door or garage door opener has vanished into the wind and you’re left holding the bag.
• Another scam is selling you things you don’t need. Are the components of your garage door really worn out or do they just need some adjustment and lubrication? You’re probably not an expert on garage door and garage door opener maintenance and repair. How are you to know if the parts are really worn out as badly as they indicated?

The best way to protect yourself from garage door and garage door opener scams is to do some research on the company you’re thinking to hire. And, if you have any doubts about what they’re telling you, don’t hesitate to get another opinion. A quality garage door technician will understand and appreciate your caution. If they don’t like the idea, there’s probably a good reason and an equally good reason for you to toss their number in the garbage.

Why is your Huntley garage door jammed and what can you do about it?

Garage doors are made to go up and down. They go up. Then they come back down. That pretty much sums up their responsibilities (along with keeping unwanted things, animals and people out). When your Huntley garage door gets stuck, it stops going up and coming down. That’s generally not part of the plan.

The first question is ‘Why?’ Why would your Huntley garage door abandon its responsibilities so flagrantly? 

There are several possible explanations, including: 

• The cable that lifts the garage door is broken
• The garage door is off its track
• You have a broken garage door spring
• Something has jammed or is blocking the garage door from moving
• The garage door opener is broken
• The power is out and the garage door opener won’t work
• The garage door is locked

The next question is, ‘What to do about the problem?’

First a word of warning: There are parts of the garage door that could seriously injure a person or worse. It’s okay to take a look at the garage door to see if you can identify the problem but approach with caution.

For instance, if you find that a broom handle has fallen into the door’s path and has lodged in place so the door won’t operate, as long as you’re careful, you may be able to extricate the broom so the garage door can return to it’s assigned duties of going up and down.

If you notice that the garage door is locked you can unlock it. If you discover that the power is out to the garage door you can check the fuse box or circuit breakers. But be cautious here, too: there may be a short that tripped a circuit breaker and shorts can cause fires.

You may notice that the spring that runs side-to-side above the garage door is broken. This is definitely something you want to leave to the professionals. Those springs come with such force that they can take off a finger in the blink of an eye, or worse, if someone doesn’t know what they’re doing.

The same is true if the cable is broken. It’s possible you can put the garage door back in the track, if you approach it with caution, but the question is, ‘Why did it come out of the track and will it come out again?’

The garage door opener often requires the technical skills and experience of a professional. 

If there’s nothing apparently wrong with your Huntley garage door and garage door opener, you may want to call in a professional to perform some maintenance. Timely maintenance is the pound of cure that could save you from the problems listed above.

Time for Spring Cleaning? Don’t forget the Garage

Spring is only about a week away, officially speaking (Saturday, March 20). As the last couple of years have shown, this is no guarantee that we’re done with winter-like weather. But it does mean we’re on the downhill slope of this particular winter. Warmer weather is just around the corner. Well, we’ve actually had a taste of spring-like weather already.

The first official day of Spring typically puts a spring in our step, if you’ll pardon the pun. Major League Baseball starts Spring training, Robbins start chirping in the trees and flower buds poke their heads through the crusty soil. If you really want to embrace the sense that seasons are changing, get busy doing some Spring Cleaning. 

Tips for Spring Cleaning your garage

By this time of year, most garage floors are covered with the dregs of winter driving – dirt and salt carried in from the roads. The first step in getting at this layer of winter residue is to clear the deck. Move things up on the shelves, where possible, and out of the garage, and out of the way, so you can blast that filthy film away.

You want to put things that don’t do well with water out of reach, such as salt for the driveway and walkways (hopefully, you won’t need anymore until next winter anyhow). Now gather your tools:

• A hose with spray adapter
• Stiff push broom
• A mop
• A bucket
• Floor squeegee or wet vac
• Detergent (might try some vinegar, too)

Start by wetting the floor. Add warm water and detergent (vinegar) to the bucket and dip the stiff push broom into the mixture. Then start scrubbing. Once you’ve broken the salty dirt from the floor, mop up the floor and dispose of the dirty water.

Clean out your bucket and fill it with warm water. Then mop the floor with the fresh water. Once you have the floor clean enough, squeegee the water into a drain, if you have one, mop up the water or turn loose the wet vac. You may have to repeat the first step several times, but you should find yourself with a clean garage floor ready for spring and summer.

Straighten and Organize your garage

We generally use different items from the garage with greater frequency in different seasons. You use a rake more in the fall, a snow shovel in the winter, gardening tools and lawnmower in the spring and summer. 

You’ll want to move the fall and winter tools back out of the way (but keep the snow shovel handy for a little while, just in case) and bring the spring and summer tools to the forefront. Often, this means bringing the spring and summer tools to the middle shelves where they’re easily reached and putting the fall and winter tools in back, up high or down low.

It’s a good idea to coordinate your tools so that, for instance, your gardening tools are in one area, tools used in the house another set of shelves and tools for working on the car and other equipment are in another. Then you want another area for those recreational items in the garage.

Switch out your motorized equipment and ‘toys’

We’re getting closer and closer to the day where you’ll want to put the snow blower away, while parking the snow mobiles. At the same time, we’re also getting closer to the day when you’ll need the lawnmower. You’ll also want to get the jet skis ready for the season, as well as the boat.

As you put gas-driven equipment and ‘toys’ away, you want to prepare them for storage – clean them off and put some stabilizer in the fuel so that it doesn’t go bad while in storage (read the instructions carefully). Then you want to check the powered equipment you use during the summer to make sure that it all runs safely and reliably.

This is a good time for some garage door maintenance

While you’re doing your spring cleaning in the garage, it’s a good time to perform some garage door maintenance. How did your garage door and garage door opener fare over the course of the winter that is starting to slip away? Do your garage door and garage door opener need some adjustments? Is anything broken or badly worn? 

You’ll also want to lubricate your garage door. There are different types of lubricants used for different parts of the garage door. You may want to bring in a garage door technician to lubricate your garage, inspect its condition, and make any necessary adjustments to the garage door and garage door opener. Then, get ready to enjoy spring and the summer that follows.

What would Pepé Le Pew’s Valentine say about the smell of your garage?

Poor Pepé Le Pew the lovestruck skunk. All the ladies of the forest adore him until they get close enough for a good whiff. His distinctive odor is not conducive to reeling in his special Valentine. But Pepé is not the only one with odiferous difficulties. Your Valentine my turn up his or her nose when stepping into your garage.

WHAT IS THAT SMELL?!!!

There are a number of offenders who may bring less-than-pleasant odors to your garage. And different offenders bring different odors. To track down the culprit when your garage is presenting a hint of something unpleasant, cautiously give your nostrils a try (cautiously on the chance that the odor is from something unsafe).

What are some of the common odors found in garages? The smell of …

• Gasoline
• Mold & Mildew
• Oil-Based Paints
• Household cleaners
• Other chemicals
• Natural Gas
• Pests
• Etc.

If you smell gasoline, the first thing to consider is that, if that the smell of gasoline, if in a confined area can make you ill or worse. The first thing you want to do is open the door and/or a window. DON’T light a match until you’ve done something about the origin of the smell of gasoline. 

The smell of gasoline comes, logically, from gasoline. What do you have in your garage that contains gasoline? This can include your car, gas cans, garden and snow removal equipment, such as lawnmowers and snow blowers; motorcycles, snowmobiles, boats with engines and other vehicles. Rags soaked with gasoline will also emit the odor of gasoline but would dry up after a while.

Look signs of gasoline leaking from any of these items. Check that their caps are secure and not allowing gasoline vapors to escape. Once you find the culprit, you need to fix it.

The source of odors from household cleaners, oil-based paints and other chemicals are also found by tracking down the source. Many of these are toxic in a confined area and very often flammable. They can even prove explosive given the right conditions. Along with tracking down the source, you want to be very careful about what you store in your home and garage.

Natural gas will generally come from a furnace or hot water heater in your garage. If you smell natural gas, it’s probably best to call the gas company to come out, locate the leak and fix it.

Pests can build nests, bring edible items in that might decay, and use your garage as a bathroom. All of these activities can cause odors. Beyond orders, nesting pests can also cause damage to the structure of your garage.

Fortunately, it’s not likely that an odiferous garage will chase your Valentine away. Of course, if one of Pepé Le Pew’s cousins takes up residence in your garage, your Valentine may run anyhow.