Electric Garage Door Opener
Get a Roller Garage Door with an Electric Garage Door Opener
An electric garage door opener is a huge boon to any household and some businesses, but they don’t work on all garage doors. Many garage doors are of the one-piece variety: a massive panel of wood or metal that simply rotates upward when opened. Electric garage door openers don’t work on one-piece doors; they must be used on roller garage doors. These kinds of doors are made up of many small panels that allow the door to travel around a smaller corner as it is raised and lowered.
There are many benefits to having a roller garage door, and they are only multiplied when you add an electric garage door opener.
Security
Like any other door, roller garage doors prevent easy access to your home through the garage. Roller doors are much harder to cut through than one-piece doors, making them slightly more secure than a single panel.
Weatherization
The garage offers protection to your car, not only from other people, but from the elements. With a weather-sealed roller door on your garage, your car will stay dust- and bird-dropping free as well as staying closer to room temperature, making a cold morning startup a much more efficient process.
Space
Roller doors offer much more space efficiency than single-panel doors. Both in terms of allowing a taller vehicle and in allowing you to maximize storage space in your garage, a roller door is the way to go.
Stability
Roller garage doors need no counterbalancing mechanism, meaning that there’s no chance of the mechanism failing and the door closing unexpectedly. Once it’s in the up position, gravity actually helps keep it in place rather than encouraging it to fall.
Electric Garage Door Opener
Roller doors can be automated with an electric garage door opener. This is perhaps the most significant advantage of a roller garage door, because it opens the path to many other advantageous elements:
Convenience
The obvious: when it’s snowing, or hot, or rainy, or you are just plain tired, an electric garage door opener allows you to get the door open from the comfort of your vehicle and without strain.
Safety
If your driveway is poorly lit, it can be dangerous to stumble about in the dark to open your garage door. Similarly, the lights on an automated garage door opener guarantee that your garage is never too dark to navigate when you finally get home.
Access
Most decent electric garage door openers come with keypad entry, so even if you don’t have your house keys and your remote is out of batteries, you always have a safe way to get inside. You might want to look at the Seip electric operators.
Comparing the cost of decent roller garage doors and electric garage door openers with the benefits of owning and using them, the analysis is clear: if you own a garage, you should own a roller door and an electric opener. If you’re having trouble deciding where to find the right roller door and electric opener for you, check out the Hormann garage doors offered here at the Garage Door SuperStore.
Electric Garage Door Openers
Electric Garage Door Openers — Necessary Maintenance
Electric garage door openers are extraordinarily useful and convenient devices, but as many homeowners have discovered too late, they are not without their needs. Without regular inspection and maintenance, an electric garage door opener can suddenly and unexpectedly become quite a burden. To keep your opener working as long as possible, there are a few simple steps you should take at least twice a year — during fall and spring if you live in a temperate climate, simply because there are no temperature extremes that can cause you to slightly misadjust the device.
Start your inspection by looking at every part of the system. Look for loose bolts or screws, worn or distorted metal, dirty tracks, rusty or bent springs, levers, hinges, and cables, and frayed electrical wire. Keep the mechanism clean and if you see any signs of metal stress or unexpected bends, dents, or distortions, it’s time for a test run.
Use the electric garage door opener first, keeping careful watch for any trembles, hiccups, or unexpected noises as the door descends. If you see something significant, move on to step two: raise the door back up, use the manual disconnect to detach the door from the opener, and lower it by hand.
If the problems go away, you have an issue because the flaw is with the opener itself. Electric garage door openers are stable, reliable machines, but they can go wrong quickly and profoundly. It’s often less expensive to replace a chain drive opener than it is to have it repaired, and screw drive systems rarely break just a little bit – but belt drive systems can frequently be repaired more inexpensively than they can be replaced.
If the doors are still difficult to open and close when the opener is disconnected, then the problem is either the tracks or the springs. Start by cleaning and tightening the tracks and lubricating everything with a light oil; it’s a simple process that will solve most problems. If it doesn’t, it’s time to examine the springs.
The springs should be able to keep the door exactly half open without any assistance on your part — if they can’t, they’re likely the culprit. If the door starts to go up from halfway, the springs are too tight and need to be loosened. More likely, if the door starts to descend and then suddenly crashes down, your springs are worn out and must be replaced. Don’t ever do this yourself; the springs are under extreme tension and are very dangerous to disconnect.
If your garage door is made of wood, you will need to repaint the outside of your door every two to three years. If your door is a once-piece door and it spends any amount of time in the open position, examine it for sagging and consider adding a metal reinforcing strip or two if you see any evidence of it
Garage Door Openers
Garage Door Openers – Know Your Options
Electric garage door openers aren’t as simple as they used to be. If you’re a first-timer looking to buy, install, or repair an electric garage door opener — or even if you’re just about to call a specialist to help you out — you’re going to want to know a bit about modern garage door openers before you get started. There are three major categories of electric opener have different needs in terms of tools and expertise as well as different positive attributes:
Chain Drive
A chain drive garage door opener is the most common system for most residential uses. Basically, a motor pulls a chain, which in turn pulls up the door. It’s fairly simple to install and cheap. On the downside, it’s noisy — so noisy that an attached home (or any rooms above the garage) are going to know every time the garage is opened or closed. Some models offer ‘hidden chains’ that reduce the noise slightly, but chain drive openers will always be louder than their more expensive counterparts.
Screw Drive
The screw drive essentially uses a long steel rod with a spiraling divot – essentially a long screw — which spins, lifting the door. With only one moving part, it requires much less maintenance than either of the other options and can be installed my most homeowners with remarkable ease. With plastic tracks in place, a screw drive model is much less noisy than a chain drive — but it has the decided disadvantage of being by far the slowest model. For kids and pets, that’s not a bad thing, but if you use your garage as a workspace (or have any other reason to frequently walk in and out through the garage door), it can be a real pain to wait for the door to get up high enough to walk under.
Belt Drive
Belt drives are by far the most expensive and hardest to install of the electric garage door openers, but they have a couple of advantages that make the effort and expense well worthwhile. First, they’re so quiet that even clanky sheet-metal doors can be opened in the middle of the night without disturbing someone sleeping above the garage. Second, they’re quick to raise and lower the door, which can be a lifesaver if you use your garage for anything other than storing your car.
Of course, there are many elements of electric garage door openers that go with any model you choose. Automatic reverse (with motion detectors, to keep kids and pets from getting pinned under the door), a lighting system so that your garage isn’t dark when you get out of your car, and a manual release for when the power goes out should all be standard options — if the model you’re thinking about doesn’t have them, get a different model. Less necessary but still wise is a keypad entry system, so if your remote runs out of batteries on the road, you can still get your car into the garage.
Garage Door Opener
Installing Your Garage Door Opener
A garage door opener — why bother? Well, have you ever sat in your car as the hail poured down around you and stared at your garage door, dreading getting out and opening the door, but knowing that you can’t just let the hail ding up your vehicle? That’s why to bother. After a long drive in perfect heated-or-air-conditioned temperature, getting out to wrestle with a garage door in humid heat, rain, or even just a morning chill can take the wind out of your sails. If only someone had invented a button that could move that mass for you.
Of course, someone did! It’s called an automatic garage door opener, and it’s pretty easy to buy one. Of course, before you do, you need to decide if you’re going to invest in professional installation or do it yourself. If you do plan to be the one installing your own hardware, there are a few things you need to know before you start:
Tools
Look at the instruction manual of the opener you choose before you buy — and make sure you have all of the tools necessary to install it. If you can easily acquire any missing tools, or you have handy friends that might have them, don’t let your lack get in your way, but if you need something specific and expensive, you need to take that extra cost into account. Be sure you assemble all necessary tools on site before you start the installation process.
Safety
Before you deal with any garage door openers, you need to be sure the door is in excellent condition. That means that it opens and closes with no troubles, it’s properly sealing against the weather, and it’s free of any cracks or warping. Oil all of the moving parts, clean out the track, and wipe down the seal. Switch off your garage’s circuit breaker, and unhook the manual rope levers immediately before the installation.
Operation
Find the center of the door, then open the door entirely so that you can mark the spot where the motor should sit. Install the garage door opener up far enough that it won’t danger any tall vehicles parked beneath it. Read your garage door opener’s instruction manual carefully; the different types of garage door opener work in very different manners.
Finalizing
Once you have your opener up and running, you must adjust the open and close limits so that the door doesn’t plow into the pavement or open past it’s tracks. Also, don’t forget to install and test the motion detectors that keep small children and pets safe from your closing garage doors, even if you have neither yourself. Finally, correctly hook up the manual release kit so that you can operate your garage door even during a power outage.
Remotes and Buttons
Once everything works properly, distribute the remotes between your cars, and hardwire any indoor buttons to the appropriate places in your home (making sure to keep the buttons high enough off the ground that young children can’t operate them). If your garage door opener has a keypad associated with it, wire up and test that as well. Hormann electric operators are a particular favourite.
Having followed all of these steps, you will be pleasantly surprised at how easily your garage door openers can be completely installed and made functional.
How to Programme Your Homelink Electric Garage Door Opener
If you’ve got a car that has the Homelink system installed, then this video is an easy guide to getting it set up and sychronised with your electric garage door opener.
Car makers like Audi, Bentley, BMW, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Volkswagen offer the Hoemlink system as an optional extra in numerous models.
The main advantage of the Homelink system is that the remote control is permanently integrated into your vehicle. Depending on the interior design, it is fitted into the rearview mirror, the sun visor – as in the Volkswagen Golf – or in the overhead console.
No more hunting around for the remote control or worrying about the danger of your handheld transmitter being stolen. HomeLink also eliminates the need to keep changing the battery of the handheld control since the power supply runs through the car’s on-board electronics.
Automated Garage Doors for the Home
Your home is your own personal fortress; a castle in which you can relax at the end of a long day. As the king or queen of your castle, you should be treated to the utmost convenience and safety when you are home as well as when you are away. Believe it or not, the type of garage door you have will either add to this or detract from it.
When you come home after a long day of work or play, the last thing you should have to do is get out of your vehicle to manually push open your garage door. If you are safety minded, then you will likely also have to unlock the garage door before you can open it. When you think about this, you aren’t really creating much safety by doing this. What you really need is a door that operates with an electric garage door opener.
Just what is it about an electric garage door opener that is so great? Let’s go back to the scenario of you getting out of your car to manually unlock and open your garage door. Locking your garage door is a great idea, except that when you are busy unlocking it, you have opened yourself up to an unsafe scenario. While you are focused on the lock, you are not focused on your surroundings. If a bad guy really wanted to, he could take the opportunity to hop in your car; and away they go!
Because an electric garage door opener works remotely, you do not have to leave the safety of your vehicle to get into your garage. All you do is push a button and drive right in. There is no need to get out into bad weather or unsafe conditions. Furthermore, because automated doors like roller garage doors are not manually operated, there is no need for you to place an exterior lock on the door.
Roller garage doors are a popular choice for automated doors these days. This type of garage door is compact and rolls right up into the garage when you open it to enter and exit. If the overhead space in your garage is too low to accommodate standard roller garage doors, there is also an option to install an external roller instead. Using an external roller garage door means that you actually see the rolled up door from the front of your home; but all the convenience and safety are still there and that is what is truly important.
Keeping the fortress that is your home safe and secure has become an easier task with the advances in automated garage doors featuring a Hormann electric garage door opener. Not only do you get a safer environment with an automated garage door; but you also gain the convenience of driving right into your garage. No more getting out in the cold or the rain to manually open a hefty door, just easy entry. With this addition to your home, you really are the ruler of your own personal castle!
Electric Garage Door Openers and Your Security
Garage doors are used to protect many different things. For some people, garage doors protect their cars, an extension to their house, or… a lot of junk. Depending on the type of valuable material that you keep in your garage, security may or may not be a priority for you. But for those of you who are worried about potential break-ins or the compromise of your home and your family’s security, keep in mind the special role electric garage door openers can play in determining the level of security you require.
The most obvious way to secure your garage and indirectly secure your house is to make sure that the area around your house is well lit, but you can take different security measures to make sure that you will be safe.
A big distinction you can make when choosing your electric garage door opener is whether you will use a keyless entry pad with a security code. Electric garage door openers typically use a remote controlled button that you can keep in your car or attach to your keyring. Possible intruders will not have access to this type of electric garage door opener remote, so the security level will be decent. A keypad outside your garage will use a certain security code for your electric garage door opener. The fact that only you will know the code and that these types often involve a very strong security system is the upside. The downside is that getting out of your car to type the code is a bit of an inconvenience. Most garage doors openers can be installed with both types of , which can add convenience and security.
With technology getting more and more advanced, you need to make sure that you keep up with potential criminals. One way to do this is to make sure that your electric garage door opener uses a rolling code system as opposed to a fixed code system. If you already have a garage door opener installed and still want to up your security, look into purchasing a new receiver with a rolling code.
Even if you are not worried about intruders, remember that your electric garage door opener can still provide safety if you have animals or small children. Many electric garage door openers have security mechanisms that cause them to automatically stop and go back up if they sense an obstruction in the path of the door. For your two-year-old chasing a puppy underneath a closing garage door, this could be a lifesaver, literally.
Remember to balance security and cost when considering these different options. Though your garage is the first line of defense when it comes to protecting your home, you may want to invest in a home security system as well as a very secure electric garage door opener if you do keep valuables in your garage.
Transmitters and Trolleys: The Technology of Garage Door Openers
C.G. Johnson invented electric garage door openers in 1926. Despite their name, garage door openers do not open and close the door. The process is much more technical—the counterbalance springs open and close the door because of tension that is put on them. It is the job of garage door openers to release and stop the garage door at a certain point.
Electric garage door openers are complex structures. The garage door, attached to a type of trolley, can slide back and forth by means of an arm, which is connected to a track. In case of emergency, there is a mechanism on the trolley that allows the garage door and trolley to be disunited quickly. This track protrudes from garage door openers, a medium-sized boxlike unit which contains an electric motor. The opener hangs from the ceiling, located above this rigging. Switches on the opener control how far the door is open or closed when the electric motor receives a signal from the transmitter. At the end of the track, which extends from the garage door opener, it connects to a bracket that is attached to the wall that the garage door is under when fully closed.
Since their invention, garage door openers have evolved. There have been four basic types of garage door transmitters. The transmitter is the device that sends the signal to the electric motor in electric garage door openers.
When garage door openers first came into existence, the transmitter system was very simple. There was a transmitter, in the form of a remote, and a receiver, which was on electric garage door openers. Once the transmitter conveyed the signal (a specific frequency), the receiver would pick it up and do as the frequency indicated. This system was also used in war. During World War II this system was used to ignite bombs. With garage door openers, problems occurred in the system. Because the frequencies were strong enough to interfere with other receivers, a person could inadvertently open his neighbour’s garage door.
An intermediate system developed with a wireless system of garage door openers. This did help with the interference between neighbouring Hormann electric garage door openers but did not appease security needs.
The next system utilized a frequency spectrum range between 300-400 megahertz. To avoid security problems that occurred in the previous systems, this system used rolling codes, which prevented criminals from recording and replaying the codes. To open the door, the owner had to use a certain code that would send a certain frequency to its receiver. Every time that code was used, a generator came up with a completely new code for the next opening. Because each code was diverse from the last, intruders could not record and replay the codes.
This system fared well, but there was one problem. Land Mobile Radio Systems (LMRS) used by the Military interfered with electric garage door openers. This problem led to the most recent change in garage door openers. Instead of having a 300-400 frequency range, it was limited to a 315 megahertz range, preventing interference from LMRS.
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.
