Is it time to clean your Richmond garage door?

You’ve got a nice garage door out there on your Richmond garage but even nice garage doors get dirty. From time to time, you may want to give that garage door a bath. For that matter, if the door is dirty, the garage is probably dirty, too. You can wash the entire garage door.

One way to clean a dirty garage door on your Richmond garage is to hire a company with a power washer to come out and clean your garage and garage door. Or you can rent a power washer yourself. The other option requires additional elbow grease and/or effective cleaning solution.

Even with a power washer, it’s a good idea to use an effective cleaner and a brush. By brush, this refers to the kind that attaches to a handle, such as a broom handle. Gives you the leverage and reach to get up high without necessarily dripping all over yourself.

Clorox, the bleach maker, recommends using a mix of ½-cup of bleach to a gallon of water. But bleach is harsh and you may want to opt for something else. As with any cleaning solution, you probably want to try it out somewhere as inconspicuous as possible to make sure it doesn’t have a negative effect on the base material or the paint or other surface coating.

There are a number of other cleaning products you may want to use. The key is that, while you want something that doesn’t damage the material or surface, you also want a cleaner that washes off easily.

Another consideration is the rubber weatherstripping around your garage door. You’ll want to clean this, too. But you don’t want to use anything that will dry out the rubber. It might make sense to wipe it down with a damp cloth.

You also want to be careful not to hit the inside mechanism that operates your garage door. Most of these parts are metal and can rust. Many of the parts that operate opening and closing your garage door require lubrications. You don’t want to wash away the lubricants.

In fact, when you’re done cleaning your garage door, it’s not a bad idea to have some maintenance done on your garage door. This will ensure that all adjustments are proper and everything that should be lubricated is properly lubricated.

Of course, when washing your garage door, you should prepare for the experience. Choose a warm day when you won’t mind getting wet. Wear clothes that are appropriate for the occasion. 

• Fill a bucket with water and your gentle cleaning solution
• Wet down the surface you’re cleaning
• Scrub the surface with a soapy brush being careful not to do any damage but scrubbing hard enough to loosen the dirt
• Rinse down the surface 
• Wipe down the weather stripping
• Adjust and lubricate the inside garage door opening mechanism

Some folks even wax their garage doors. That’s certainly an option, assuming you won’t get too much wax into texture of the surface where you can’t get it out.

Hiring someone to power wash your Richmond garage door is a nice way to get the job done while you make other use of the time. But, you want to make sure they do a good job and they don’t damage anything.

On the other hand, if you do it yourself, you can save some money, as long as you do it right.

What are the UV rays of the sun doing to your Lake Villa garage door?

The sun is incessant in its attack on your Lake Villa garage door. It bears down without mercy drying out the wood, fiberglass or metal and draining the color of the paint or material. It doesn’t care how your garage door looks and it doesn’t care about it’s effect on how your garage door works.

Have you ever seen a badly faded garage door in your Lake Villa neighborhood? Of course, you have. How did it get that way? Mostly, it got that way because of the sun.

There’s an ultra-violet component to the sun’s rays that are destructive. They’ll fade the paint on your car as sure as they’ll fade the paint on your garage door.

UV rays play a nasty game with the molecular structure of materials. They dry out the rubber weather strip around the garage door. But they don’t stop there. They go after the garage doors themselves.

The longer the sun bombards your garage door with its UV rays, the more brittle and less flexible your garage door becomes. Cracks can appear in your garage door whether it’s made of fiberglass, metal or wood. Overtime, your garage door would disintegrate. 

The color will fade, and a chalky substance will appear on the surface. Moving parts will lose their lubricants. And the longer you operate mechanical parts without proper lubrication, the more wear and damage they experience.

The first thing to do to protect your garage door from the harmful effects of the sun’s UV rays is to lubricate moving parts with sufficient frequency, and the proper lubricants. This will make a tremendous difference in the life-span of your garage door and garage door opener (keep in mind that the garage door opener has to work harder when bearings and hinges on the garage door are not properly lubricated).

Insulating the garage door will help to keep the sun’s rays from turning the inside of your garage door into an oven. But what about protecting the garage door itself?

You can protect your garage door by painting it with a paint or varnish that is resistant to the UV rays, such as a Valspar or similar product. You can also apply a protective film on the garage door.

You may also want to wash your garage door once or twice a year to protect it from corrosive materials.

If you’re choosing a new garage door, you want to choose a door with the aesthetic appeal you’re looking for, but you also want one that is easy to maintain. You can ask your garage door technician for tips about which garage door will work best for you in your area and considering the exposure of your garage door – whether it’s facing South, North, East or West.

The sun will beat down on your Lake Villa garage door and there isn’t much you can do about that. But if you know what it’s UV rays are doing to your garage door, you can take steps to protect the door.

Are your Lindenhurst garage door springs getting tired?

Spring just ended last week and though most of us here in Lindenhurst are happy to have the summer stretching out ahead of us, few of us are actually tired of spring. After all, spring is not a season to tire of. Unlike winter, which many of us are happy to put behind us, we generally enjoy spring.

While you’re not tired of spring, you may want to consider if your springs are tired. Which springs? The springs on your Lindenhurst garage door.

Garage door springs do get tired over time. They probably don’t care too much for winter either, since the winter brings extremes of cold that have a peculiar relationship with the metal of your garage door springs.

The cold makes metal contract. Think about when you get cold and draw back into your winter coat to huddle against the frigid temps. Your body is rigid. The same is true of your garage door springs. Winter makes them stiff.

Fortunately, as we all appreciatively know, winter has passed. In fact, spring has also passed. Those garage door springs have warmed up and relaxed, most likely, again. Most likely because the winter of 2021-22 was probably not their first winter.

How many winters have your garage door springs survived? How many times have they contracted with the winter cold and then warmed up again in the spring? These kinds of things strain metal parts, particularly metal parts that are designed to flex, like springs.

It’s reasonable to think of garage door springs as boosters. They take up most of the weight of a garage door. When you open the garage door by hand, you’ve probably noticed that it takes some effort to do so. Imagine what it would be like without those garage door springs.

If you had no garage door springs, you’d have to lift all that weight yourself. It would really take some effort. You’d get a workout lifting your garage door.

If it takes that much energy for you to lift the garage door by hand, think about that little box in the ceiling of your garage. Inside that box is a small motor. Many garage door openers have half or quarter horsepower motors. And yet they lift and lower your garage door day after day, again and again, winter, spring, summer, fall and back to winter again.

Imagine if you garage door assembly didn’t have springs to lift that garage door. What is certain is that you would need a much bigger motor in the garage door opener. And you’d need a much bigger box to put it in.

In the meantime, while that spring takes a lot of the load off your garage door opener, as your garage door springs get tired, more and more of that load is passed off to your garage door opener. This is why you want to consider the idea that your garage door springs may be getting tired.

In the meantime, enjoy the Lindenhurst summer ahead while you let a garage door technician check out your garage door springs.

Fishing is a great way to spend your time in Antioch but it’s also a technique thieves use to break into garages

It’s June and odds are pretty good the fish are biting in one of the lakes in and around Antioch. Why not get your pole and tackle, buy some bait and load ‘em in the boat and head to Blarney Island, Chain O’Lakes Boat Rental or another boat launch? 

While you’re out angling for some of that Lunker in Channel Lake, hopefully, no on is back at your Antioch home doing some fishing of another sort.

Why kind of fishing would they do at your house? Well, they might be fishing to get into your garage.

Fishing is the name of a technic some thieves will use to get into a garage. How does it work?

It’s really quite simple. The thief pushes on the top panel of your garage door and, if it gives way so there’s a gap between the top of the garage door and the garage door frame, the reach in with a wire or coat hanger and hook the emergency release cord on the garage. With a simple tug they are then able to manually raise the garage door.

Fortunately, there is a way to stop those thieves in their tracks; have your garage door adjusted properly.

When the garage door is properly adjusted the thieves find that they can’t push the top panel back to make room to hook the release cable. Adjusting the garage door properly, so thieves can’t go fishing to get into your garage, is a fairly simple procedure for a garage door technician.

Think about all the stuff you have in your garage: tools, toys (big boys and the kids’), access to the house. Fortunately, while you’re out fishing, they can’t get at the boat and your fishing tackle. But the potential losses are significant. 

Fishing, the kind you enjoy is a wonderful pastime. It’s relaxing and rewarding. You’re out in nature, breathing the fresh are and enjoying the peace and quiet out there on the lake. But thieves find their kind of fishing rewarding, too. Well, unless you have your garage door adjusted so they can’t land a prize in your Antioch home and at your expense.

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.

As Lake Villa winter passes, time for some garage door maintenance

Winter was tough on your Lake Villa garage door and garage door opener. It’s a given. It’s simply a factor of dealing with winter in these parts, even a comparatively mild winter.

The kind of cold we experience in Lake Villa makes parts of the garage door and garage door opener brittle. Parts wear differently when they’re hardened by the cold. They’re more prone to break in this condition.

There’s also the effects of snow, ice and moisture on parts of the garage door and garage door opener. The moisture that gets into bearings and the tracks that guide the garage door displaces lubricants and cause rust. Moisture can also get into the wiring of the garage door opener.

This is the reality. And after experiencing winters year after year, the wear and tear on garage doors and garage door openers is cumulative.

It wouldn’t be so bad if people maintained their garage doors and garage door openers properly. But, overwhelmingly, that’s not the case. Many people never provide appropriate maintenance for their garage doors and openers.

Some garage doors have never had a drop of new lubrication added to their rollers, hinges, bearings and drive chains. They’ve operated for years with nothing going for them except good luck.

Garage door maintenance can go a long way toward extending the life of a garage door and garage door opener. It can reduce the likelihood of parts breaking. But it does more than that.

Garage door maintenance will keep your garage door running smoothly, efficiently and quietly. Efficiently can include a garage door that goes up and down at the speed that it did when it was new. Without that maintenance, the way a pot slowly boils, you may not notice that the garage door is going up and down slower (and louder) than it used to.

It’s not a bad idea to perform maintenance on your garage door and garage door opener before winter, ensuring that everything is adjusted properly and adequately lubricated. But it’s also a good idea to maintain them after winter passes. Before winter, it’s to prepare them for the rigors of the winter to come. After winter, it’s to help them recover from the effects of the winter that has just passed.

Lake Villa is a great place to live. But there’s no denying that winters are rough. And your garage door and garage door opener can testify to that. A little maintenance will go a long way to helping them endure the worst that winter can throw at them.