Is your garage door opener getting on in the years? If you haven’t thought about it in a decade or more, it might be time to consider installing a new one.
We’ll look at five different reasons that it’s time to move on and install a new opener. A lot of it comes down to safety, including how safe your own family members are using the garage door. Upgrading will also provide you with new technology and features that can streamline your life.
Make Your Garage Door Less of a Hazard
The main entry point of a home is often the garage for families with an attached garage. You park your car in there and go inside, right? Your kids may come through the garage when they get home, and you probably use the garage to do things like take out the trash bin on pickup day. But the fact is that the garage door can be a safety hazard if it isn’t properly supported by a good opening system.
First and foremost, you want the garage to be a safe place for your family and your pets. After all, you are likely use the garage door to get into and out of the house quite often, and that means that there are people and pets that could be at risk when you have an old door. Older door openers, such as those that were made , do not have the same safety systems in place as the newer doors. These older doors would only have a mechanical automatic reversal system. If the door comes into contact with anything, it automatically reverses.
It is a fact that before 1993 door openers had only one automatic reversal system, the one we call “mechanical”. This system meant that the door would reverse if anything was touched by the door on the way down. But today, we have other safety systems for adding protection.
The most popular safety feature for garage doors in the U.S. and Canada is the second safety system, this one using photo eyes. This system consists of two units placed on each side of the door, about four to six in. (10 to 15 cm) from the ground with one sending a beam of light to the other. If anything breaks this beam, the door automatically goes back up.
Are you confident that your door opener is equipped with these two automatic reversal systems and that they are working properly, thus ensuring your safety and that of your family?
Older Garage Door Openers Can Be Unsafe
Did you know that older garage door openers do have the potential to be hacked by criminals? If you programmed the remote for your door opener using DIP switches set in either a +, 0, or – position, it is very likely that the signal can be received by ill-intentioned people who will then go ahead and burglarize your home in your absence.
However, since 1993, newer garage door openers use a system that changes the code constantly. Therefore, only your garage door opener will work on the door, and your home will be safer. In 1993, Chamberlain Group (including the brands Chamberlain, LiftMaster and Craftsman) started equipping its remotes with the Security+ system which allowed for many millions of codes. This was followed by its Security + 2.0 system in 1996 offering more than 1 billion possible codes.
Is Your Garage Door Connected?
Today we have garage door openers that are “smart”, meaning they are connected to our mobile devices. We can open and close the garage door from anywhere in the world – very useful for letting in a dog sitter or checking that you shut the door when you arrive at work. Chamberlain Group (LiftMaster and Craftsman) have offered the technology MyQ since 2013.
Is Your Garage Door Just Too Noisy?
Whether you have a bedroom above the garage, or you just cringe when you hear the garage door through the house, a noisy garage door is not something you need to live with. The garage door noises usually happen when you have an opener that operates with a chain drive, like that on a bicycle, or a system made up of a chain attached to a steel cable. Today, there are door openers that use rubber belts (reinforced with metal fibers similar to the way car tires are made) that are proven to be much quieter.
We also offer other things to help reduce noise in a garage door, such as white or black nylon rollers to replace the metal rollers, or a vibration isolator system which uses rubber placed between the opener motor and the metal brackets holding it to the ceiling to make the door even quieter as it operates.
Frequent Power Outages Don’t Affect New Models As Much
Older garage door openers do start to have issues when you’ve had frequent power outages. However, new openers come with backup batteries that make them useful in extended outages. Consider models like:
All of these are from LiftMaster, and this added feature is very handy!
Contact Us Today
When you start by contact uscontacting us, toll free, at 330-889-0062, we can help you find exactly what you need without any of the hassle. We know garage doors and door openers inside out! We can talk to you about your needs, make suggestions for great options, and even email a quotation.
We’d also love to see you in our showroom. For choosing a new garage door that really suits you, why not try our Design Centre? Or go through our image gallery to get some inspiration.
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