Are Automatic Garage Doors That Convenient?
Although there are those that still use roll up garage doors to protect their car, the automatic kind are becoming the rule where once they were the exception. Some people may believe that automatic garage doors are a relatively new invention, but they have apparently been in use for over three-quarters of a century. You can either purchase an electric door or one operated by a remote. The main difference is the fact that the electric version is operated manually via a pair of switches, one inside and one outside, whereas the remote kind has the above feature but also has the additional convenience of being able to operate it from the comfort of your car. It works by transmitting a signal to a receiver which works with an electric motor to open or close the door.
You can generally choose between a trio of automatic garage doors, chain driven, screw driven or belt driven. Those on a budget may opt for the chain driven door because it is the least expensive. The downside is the fact that they produce a lot of noise in comparison to the other two. Screw driven doors are probably a better purchase because their noise level is much lower and they are almost equal in terms of cost. The belt driven version makes by far the least amount of noise and runs the smoothest of the three but it is by far the most expensive.
The convenient aspects of automatic garage doors should be obvious. Being able to open them from a distance is a fantastic comfort if the weather is extremely bad. Having to open a garage door manually under heavy rain is not a pleasant task. Furthermore, anyone who is infirm may not be able to open the door as they can be quite heavy. They are very easy to lock and are extremely difficult for a thief to bypass. If automatic garage doors are locked down correctly, it is virtually impossible for anyone to penetrate them without a code or remote control.
Those in opposition to these type of garage doors will point out that remote controls require batteries and when these run out you cannot automatically close the doors which is most inconvenient. This is not really much of an issue as you can simply replace the batteries if you think they have been used for a long time. A more serious problem is that of mechanical failure. In this instance, prevention is key and can be achieved by regularly checking to see that all parts are running smoothly. Repairing automatic garage doors can be expensive, but most companies will offer you a warranty so if your door malfunctions within this time, they will swiftly send around their experts to rectify the problem.
There can be no doubt, that despite any drawbacks automatic garage doors may have, they are still a vast improvement on manual ones. Any problems that you may have with them can be easily fixed and they offer the kind of protection and convenience that should make them an essential purchase.
Not Every Electric Garage Door Opener Can Open Every Garage Door!
If you’re just building your new garage, you’ve probably already made the no-brainer decision to use an electric garage door opener. What you may not have thought about is the fact that there are a lot of different types of electric garage door opener on the market, and not every type is appropriate for every job.
Garage doors can be extraordinarily heavy — even the thinnest sheet of steel weighs dozens of kilos when it’s seven feet tall and seven feet wide! They’re also extremely cumbersome, to boot. Add insulation, or make the door out of hardwood, and you’re rapidly getting to unusable territory unless you have the right machine for the job. When you stack on the additional torque required by roller garage doors versus multipanel overhead garage doors versus single-panel tilting doors, you’ve got a puzzle you need a lot of information to solve.
The various types of electric garage door opener vary widely in their abilities. There are basically three types of drive available on these machines: chain, screw, and belt. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks. (There are also torsion-spring drives available, but these require precision and expertise to install properly and aren’t anything that a homeowner should be attempting to use without qualified on-site help.)
The original, tried-and-true electric garage door opener is the ‘chain drive’. This type has a chain that looks very much a bicycle chain which the motor drives. They make quite a racket, and they require regular lubrication and replacement or adjustment as the gears and chain age and expand and contract with the seasonal temperature changes.
The next step up is the belt-based opener. Widely considered to be the most maintenance-free type of electric garage door opener, the belt type opener is also the fastest. The installation process is pretty much the same as for a chain drive system. This form of garage opener has the fewest moving parts of any of the three major kinds, and produces significantly less noise than a chain drive unit. They tend to run about £50 more than their chain-drive counterparts, but it’s well worth it just to have a garage door that opens twice as quickly as your old one.
The belt-driven electric garage door opener has the distinct advantage of being quiet. There are not metal-on-metal connections in a belt-driven system, except for the noise of the wheels on the side of the doors moving in their tracks, and, if you have one of the new sectional garage doors, it’s entirely reasonable to put a belt-driven garage door directly adjacent to a bedroom; that’s how quiet they are.
Finally screw drive openers are available from some US manufacturers but are considered outdated in the UK.
All three models come with motors of varying strengths, and it’s critically important to get a motor that’s powerful enough to lift your garage door. Generally speaking, the more expensive the electric garage door opener the more likely it will handle whatever you may have but always check the lifting force first.
Where Did Electric garage door openers Come From?
Nearly everyone that rents or owns a home has a garage, and most of them enjoy the use of electric electric garage door openers. But few people have ever looked into the history of these valuable bits of home machinery.
Electric garage door openers
In 1926, C.G. Johnson of Hartford City Indiana developed the first overhead electric electric garage door openers. Many people believe that electric garage door openers produce enough torque to pull the garage door up on its own, but in reality, the door is far to heavy for a small electric motor to move at all. The truth is, a pair or more of powerful springs under constant tension provide the bulk of the lifting power — just not quite enough to pull the door up on their own. The motor operates a winch that rotates a bicycle-like chain connected to the door, providing that little bit of extra lift that it takes to move it up and down.
The door itself has wheels on its sides that roll along inside of a track, which guides the door into the right position. Limiting switches on the track tell the motor to stop rotating when the door reaches the full-open or full-close positions, and most motors come with on board limiters that can be set as well. The motor itself also serves as a lock, keeping the garage door from opening.
Almost every modern electric garage door openers also feature quick-release disconnects that allow you to disengage the garage door from the machinery, allowing you to access your garage even if the machine breaks down and prevents you from opening your garage door any other way.
Remote Control
The first remote-control electric garage door openers were very simple, using only a transmitter and a receiver which activated the motor. The transmitter used a unique frequency, and the receiver had to be tuned to the same frequency. When the receiver ‘heard’ its signal, it would activate the motor, which would raise or lower the door appropriately.
When it first came into public use, this was cutting-edge technology, fresh in from World War II. In the fighting, the system was used to remotely detonate bombs. That said, it was not without it’s drawbacks: even at the lowest possible signal strength, the remotes activated nearby units and other mechanisms that used similar technology.
That means that your neighbors frequently and constantly opened and closed your garage door by mistake. Of course, it didn’t take manufacturers long to fix this flaw. By equipping each remote and receiver with a variety of possible frequencies, it was made far less likely that you would accidentally activate a neighbor’s remote.
Modern electric garage door openers have remotes with special features that prevent criminals from duplicating or copying the frequency of a remote or from reprogramming a remote to a different frequency in order to open garage doors unintended by the remote’s owner. With ‘hopping’ or ‘rolling code’ technology, each time the remote’s button is pushed, the receiver, in addition to opening the garage door, sends a signal back to the remote that tells it which frequency to use on the next button-push. This practically guarantees that any given remote will only work on the correct garage opener.
Five Reasons To Replace Your Electric Garage Door Openers — Even If It Works!
Replacing your electric garage door openers seems like an unnecessary expense until they completely breaks down, but in reality garage door openers are complex machines that may hide several problems. In addition, manufacturers regularly come out with new, innovative additions or alterations to their older models which can add significant performance, safety, and convenience.
Here are the top five reasons you might want to consider replacing your garage door opener even if it seems to be working decently.
Safety Reversal
If you have an old-model garage door opener with no safety reversal, or your safety reversal system doesn’t work, it should be replaced immediately! Manufacturers are required by law to equip their electric garage door openers with these devices, which generally consist of a pair of sensors placed about six inches off the ground, just on either side of the door. If the sensors detect something that would obstruct the door closing, they tell the motor to stop and re-open the door before it closes more than halfway.
Noise
Most new models of garage door opener are quiet and smooth. They utilize screw-based drives that run with significantly less noise pollution than the old models. The old models use a chain-based system that looks significantly like a bicycle chain — and it rattles, squeaks, and groans like one as well. If you look at your electric garage door openers and you see something that looks like a bicycle chain coming out, you may want to strongly consider replacing them.
Security
For quite some time, it was common for home invaders and burglars to cruise the streets and click their garage door remotes at every house they drove by. If they found one that worked — which was surprisingly easy to do — they would watch it, and use their remote to break in to the house once everyone was out. Since then, the criminals have gotten even more clever, using special devices that mimic all of the common signals produced by garage door opener remotes.
To counter that, newer electric garage door openers use special ever-changing signals that are nearly impossible to hack. If you’re not using a model with this feature, you are in much greater danger of being burgled.
Keyless Entry
If you have an early-generation garage door opener, chances are if you didn’t have your keys and your remote got lost or ran out of batteries, you were forced to park your car outside. Today’s electric garage door openers come with keypads that you can access from outside your garage which allow you to open the garage without needing a key. There are even super-modern models which offer fingerprint scanning, allowing you even greater security with your keyless entry system.
It is possible to purchase a keypad separately and add it to your existing system, but in most cases it’s more reliable and more effective to simply purchase a new garage door opener in its entirety.
Battery Backup
Your garage door opener probably won’t work if there’s a power outage. Since blackouts frequently occur during storms, you’re looking at the worst possible time to leave your car out in the open. Modern electric garage door openers come with battery backups which allow them to operate several dozen times without needing direct power — and when the power does come back on, they recharge the batteries automatically!
These are just a few of the ways in which modern electric garage door openers are clearly superior to the older models, any one of which makes a good reason to replace your system even if it seems to be working for you.
A Reliable Roller Door to Secure Your Garage
New garage door mechanism innovations are few and far between as it can be a bit like re-inventing the wheel. The classic designs such as up and over, sectional and roller doors have been around for a long time so when something refreshing comes along we get a bit over excited here at the Garage Door Superstore. Hormann have launched the Rollmatic as their solution to the domestic roller door which we saw at the UK launch at the beginning of July.
I am pleased to say the door is extremely impressive and reflects Hormann’s industry leading design, innovation and German build quality. Since its launch in Europe, the Hormann Rollmatic has proven to be popular with steady sales growth. Hormann have solved the main issue that all other roller doors seem to have, which is the safety edge device that detects obstacles to prevent the risk of crushing. The safety edge device is most commonly the part that fails on roller doors and we have had numerous warranty claims relating to this.
Hormann have solved this by not using a tubular motor but by using the same proven DC motor they use for their sectional and up & over doors mounted on the side of the roller door. This motor reliably detects obstacles without the need for an unreliable contact strip. The other major benefit of the Rollmatic when compared to other Roller Doors is the Guarantee Hormann provide. Unlike the other brands, there are no ambiguous clauses in the small print.
The Rollmatic has a Safe & Reliable 10 Year Warranty, the parts have 5 years, as does the motor and 2 years for the radio equipment for the remote controls. The finish on the door is beautiful and is easily the best looking roller door lathe. The wind bracing is superior to prevent annoying rattling in the wind. We have been waiting some time for the Hormann roller door and the wait looks worthwhile and the installation is simple, see the video below.
How to Avoid Getting In & Out of Your Garage Like Indiana Jones
If you’ve ever felt like you needed to do a stunt roll under your electric garage door to get out of the way of it when it’s coming down or you were in such a hurry to get into your garage that you slid under the door before it fully opened you might want to think about upgrading your garage door opener to the Hormann Supramatic.
The high tech Supramatic has a colossal opening speed of 22cm per second which means it can open your garage door up to 50% faster than other garage door motors.
To avoid wear and tear on both the door and operator, the Hormann Supramatic E accelerates as it opens and then slows to a gentle stop. The motor is extremely quiet with its maintenance free drive belt.
When you close the door it comes down gently so you have plenty of time to get out of the way if you have pressed the button and are leaving through the garage door. It has a reliable safety cut out to avoid damage to your car or injury should it encounter an obstacle when it closes.
This proven and reliable garage door opener comes with a 5 Year Hormann Guarantee for your complete peace of mind. As our most popular electric garage door operator, we have sold and installed hundreds of these over the past 4 years and we have only ever had one faulty product in all that time.
