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.
Garage Door Sizes
Garage Door Sizes Across Time and Space
Modern garage door sizes came about in a fascinating way that has, until relatively recently, had little to do with modern cars. The first garages were actually barns — logically, you kept your carriage where you kept your horses. When the carriage first turned into the ‘horseless carriage’, the idea of putting it anywhere but the barn just didn’t occur to folks. That means that the first garage door sizes were in the 30 foot by 20 foot range.
Modern garage doors in North America and Europe have evolved downward as the garage made it’s unique appearance separate from the ubiquitous barn. Nonetheless, early garages had massive doors that were more closely related to their ancestors than their purpose. It was only when cars became commonplace in densely packed suburban and urban areas did garage doors become as small as possible, to maximize space for other elements of the home or business the garages were attached to.
Today, garage door sizes in Europe and North America have been more-or-less standardized at around 7 feet high by 9 feet wide. The width is designed to take into account a car with both doors open fully. Double garages were once standardized to 16 feet by 9 feet, but have increased to 20′x9′ simply because SUVs and other gigantic vehicles have increased in popularity. Some industry analysts believe that this is a temporary phenomenon and that will vanish as smaller, more economical vehicles take over the roads.
By contrast, in space-constrained Tokyo, Japan and densely packed Chennai, India, garage door sizes — and garages themselves — have shrunk to the tiniest possible dimensions. In most of Tokyo, the garage door is only six feet across — barely large enough for the vehicle itself — and the garage is equally tiny, with a small space to allow the driver’s side door (and only the driver’s side door) to open and allow the driver out. All passengers must exit before the car is parked and enter after it leaves the garage, making a garage door opener a virtual necessity.
Part of the standardization process has been due to the fact that the materials that some garage doors are made out of are hard to custom-make. Wood that is cut to fit leaves nigh-unto useless scraps behind; metal shops can hardly afford to reconfigure equipment to shape every individual door to an owner’s need; and so on. On the other hand, newer materials such as vinyl, glass-reinforced polyester, and ABS are much easier to custom-cut to fit, making odd garage door sizes a bit more workable than they have been in the past.
It’s hard to see where garage door sizes might go in the future, primarily because it’s hard to guess what tomorrow’s vehicles might look like. Perhaps your next garage door opener will be pointed at your roof. But for now, even with more flexible materials coming out, it’s a sure bet that standard garage door sizes are going to be with us for quite some time.
Garage Door Prices
Garage Door Prices – 4 Factors to Keep In Mind
Garage door prices are a consideration that is important to take into account when you’re planning a new construction or replacing an old door, but they are only one. Those who understand just how important your garage door is to the security, insulation, aesthetic, and overall value of your home know that it’s critical to keep a few other factors in mind while you shop for a new garage door.
Size matters
Garage door sizes vary widely, and the size of your garage door dramatically affects it’s price. If you’re planning a new building, it’s important to stick to commonly-produced garage door sizes if you’re going to keep costs down. If you have an existing opening you need covered, take the best measurements you can to ensure that you get exactly the right size the first time. There’s nothing more painful than paying new garage door prices (plus shipping!) and then realizing that you have to start all over because your door is an inch too wide.
A Material World
Modern garage doors come in several different materials, each of which has it’s own look, purpose, and price. From the rustic unpainted wood garage doors of the countryside to the easy-to-scrub-clean sheet steel doors of the inner city to a modern polymer door that never needs painting and is incredibly tough, there are few things that affect garage door prices more than the substance you put between your car and the rest of the world. Garage door sizes also affect the material price, so a large polymer door will cost correspondingly more than a smaller door of the same substance.
Installation Contemplation
No matter what your door is made of, or what size it is, you’ll have to think about installing it yourself versus getting it professionally installed. DIY it, and depending on the complexity of the tracks and any automatic garage door openers you’re planning on using, you could be devoting an afternoon or several days to the process — and if you screw up and break something, it comes entirely out of your own pocket. A professional installation, however, will run a minimum of £100, again depending on complexity…in the long run, it’s almost always a good idea to go that route.
Automation Meditation
Of course, any garage door can be operated manually, but if you’re planning on using an automated garage door opener to stay comfortably in your car as you pull in to your space, you need to keep the costs associated with that in mind as you buy as well. Automated garage door openers come in several varieties with various opening speeds, noise levels, and maintenance requirements: be sure you get the one that best accomplishes your goals.
Final Thought
By assessing garage door prices based on these factors, you not only ensure that you’re getting a great deal, but that the needs of your home and lifestyle are met along the way. Don’t get stuck on price as the most relevant factor, or you’ll get stuck with a door that doesn’t do what you need — a much more costly circumstance in the long run.
Garage Doors
Garage Doors and Garage Door Prices – Getting What You Pay For
Garage doors are not something that most of us spend our days thinking a lot about — unless you work for the Garage Door SuperStore, of course — but they’re worth a moment’s consideration, especially if you haven’t maintained the one you have.
Most people don’t realize the extraordinary wear and tear that a garage door faces every day, or how quickly (or subtly) they can turn into a liability when not properly maintained. Wooden garage doors need to be re-water-sealed every few years; metal doors should have their insulation checked about as often; and any garage door needs its environmental seal checked on a yearly basis. Any failure in any of those systems can lead to heat loss (which means a higher electrical or gas bill), weather damage to objects inside the garage, and possibly an opening for an aspiring burglar to get in to your stuff.
If you’ve not done that basic maintenance, you may want to consider a new garage door. Are you familiar with recent garage door prices? They can be quite different depending on the specifics of the door you’re looking for. A simple sheet metal door with no paint, windows, or insulation can run you less than £400 — but you have to install it yourself. If you’re not a handyman, it can be well worth investing another £100 into the installation.
Vinyl doors, which are lighter and harder to dent, can be acquired (with installation and automatic door opener included) for around £1000. Premium wooden garage doors that add a sophistication and elegance to your home start in the £2000 range and go up from there. Of course, it’s rare to find a premium door that doesn’t come with an automatic opener and custom installation as part of the cost.
The type of garage door that is best for you depends on a lot of factors, from the location of your home to whether or not your garage is connected to your house.
Urban vs. Country
For security reasons, most urban residences deserve aluminum or steel doors with little fanfare. Inexpensive to maintain and high-security, these doors can come painted if you want them to look nice, or very stripped-down and straightforward if you have issues with graffiti or the like.
In the suburbs, you may need to check with your local homeowner’s association regarding your garage door; some areas restrict certain materials and colors. Generally, a painted vinyl door is the least expensive option that such an organization will allow.
Inland vs. Seaside
If you live in a seaside area, salt in the air can pit or rust metal doors, and strong maritime winds can rattle doors that aren’t powerfully sealed. Professional installations and doors made of vinyl or wood are best for such places.
Inland, heavy temperature changes between seasons make wood doors more high-maintenance than their vinyl and metal counterparts. Also, if you live in a hurricane or cyclone-prone area, strongly consider a light vinyl door, as such garage doors are much less prone to causing severe property damage when thrown about in high winds.
Whatever garage doors you fancy, keep in mind that prices vary – and not necessarily with quality. Be sure you’re getting a good deal for your money by working with an established and award-winning business like the Garage Door SuperStore.
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.
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.
Garage Door Sizes To Consider During Construction
After a new home or garage is built, it’s too late to think about which garage door sizes are going to work best for your family. Assuming that a standard sized door is going to be right for you can be a serious mistake, because once you’ve made that decision, it will take thousands of pounds of remodeling to unmake it. It’s difficult to understate the advantages of an over sized garage.
Even if you’re currently driving a single VW Golf and little else, you need to look further down the line. Standard garage doors run seven feet by seven feet — you might fit a normal medium-sized car in there without a problem, but what if you have a family before you move out of the house? A standard garage door is going to be tough to deal with in a people carrier or a 4×4 vehicle. Similarly, if you need something to be delivered to your home, an 8-foot clearance just isn’t enough for an everyday pickup truck with, say, a normal piano or a decently-sized bookshelf in the back.
On the other hand, if you work with your architect and builder beforehand, you’ll find that it’s not terribly expensive to add a foot to the width of your garage, and you’ll have a lot more options if you have a nine-foot garage door. A 4×4 with luggage or a canoe on the top wouldn’t make it through the normal garage door sizes, but an extra foot will make all of the difference. Eight feet might be a bit tall for some people to open and close by hand, but that’s why we have automatic garage door openers.
If you own a utility trailer or a boat, you know from experience that they are usually significantly wider than the car or van you tow them with — sometimes close to nine feet wide! Unless you think ahead and take the possibility that you’ll end up with one of these items into consideration during construction, you’ll have to leave your pretty toys out in the elements.
Anyone who has to back a trailer of any size into a garage will be grateful for the extra width of a 10- or 12-foot wide door. Also, widths of 14 feet and over are invaluably important if you have multiple cars, especially if they are both expensive, as it prevents dings and mirror bumping.
Talk to your builder and/or architect about designing an over sized garage and the effect that it will have on your life in addition to it’s value to the home. Even if you never use the garage for anything special, the larger garage door sizes will help add curb appeal and interest to anyone looking to buy your home in the future. The cost might seem like a bit up front, but the increase in your property value could be substantial. This is particularly true if your over sized garage comes equipped with high-end sectional garage doors, with insulation, weatherproofing, and automated garage door openers as well.
