Overhead Door of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Offers Door and Opener Safety and Security Tips
A garage door is the largest moving object in a home and is typically used every day, giving homeowners a good reason to keep it in proper working order. To promote garage door safety, Overhead Door Company of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, a local distributor for Dallas-based Overhead Door Corporation, the nation's leading manufacturer of upward-acting garage doors and openers, is taking the opportunity to provide some knowledge on essential safety and security tips for your home.
“We are dedicated to providing safe and reliable products, so discussing garage door safety presents the perfect opportunity for us to give homeowners practical tips for keeping their garage doors and openers in proper working order,” said Deric Powell, Owner and President, Overhead Door Company of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.
10 Easy Tips To Help Maintain Garage Door Safety and Security
- Mount garage door opener control buttons out of the reach of small children (at least five feet from the floor) and where you have a clear view of the door.
- Do not let children play with garage door remote controls; explain that the remote controls are not toys and discuss garage door safety with them.
- Know how to use your garage door emergency release feature. Your owner's manual provides instructions. You may need to use this during power outages.
- Visually inspect your garage door two or three times per year. Look at the springs, cables, rollers and pulleys for signs of wear. If any of these components appear damaged, contact a qualified garage door professional for inspection or repair.
- Do not attempt to remove, adjust or repair cables and springs, or anything to which these parts are attached or fastened. A trained door system technician using proper tools and instruction must make repairs or adjustments. These parts are under high tension and can cause serious injury if not held properly.
- Test the reversing mechanism on your garage door opener by placing a 2 x 4 board or a roll of paper towels in the door's path. If the door does not reverse after contacting the object, refer to your owner's manual and call a qualified garage door professional for repair or replacement.
- Disconnect the garage door opener (pulling the emergency disconnect) to manually open the door. The door should lift smoothly with little resistance and should stay open around three or four feet above the floor. If it is difficult to perform this task, your door may be out of balance, causing premature wear on the opener and door. Call a qualified garage door professional for adjustment.
- Newer garage door openers feature photoelectric eye beams, which are mounted a few inches off of the floor and send an invisible beam across the door's path. If the invisible beam is broken, the garage door will automatically reverse into its fully open position even without contact. Consider replacing older openers that were not equipped with these safety sensors.
- While on vacation or away from home for extended periods of time, unplug the garage door opener unit or use a wall vacation lock console security switch, which is an optional accessory to most openers.
- Consider purchasing a garage door opener with rolling code technology, which changes the access codes each time the transmitter is used to prevent code grabbing. Overhead Door's CodeDodger® and Genie's Intellicode® have been incorporated as standard features into their full line of openers since 1955.