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Blog Archive: November 2011

Winterproofing Your Garage

Winterproofing is a cost-effective way to help keep the heat in our homes. It is installed around doors and windows, but is often overlooked in the garage, and this can have a major impact on heat loss in the home, especially during the winter months.

Garage doors should be weatherstripped, especially if the garage is under bedrooms or the main living space. Cold winds blowing in and around garage doors can cause discomfort, especially on the floors, by cooling the hot air furnace ducts running within the floor joists. (Of course, this won’t happen in a heated garage.)

Use garage-door weatherstripping around the perimeter of the door on the wood frame and convex rubber door stripping on the bottom of the door.

After weatherstripping the door, vent the garage, as moisture will need to get out by means of proper ventilation. A simple way is to install eight-by-eight wall vents at the top of a wall, six inches from the plate, and at the bottom of the wall, six inches from the plate. This allows moisture to evaporate and exit through the passive wall vents.

When vehicles are parked in a garage during the winter months with snow and ice melting off, there must [more]

Happy Thanksgiving!

Garage Door Openers Become Hi-Tech

As the American home has continued to evolve with the speed of new technology, so has the garage. In order to keep up with the everyday busy lives of homeowners and the need for these homeowners to spread out and utilize all the space within their homes, garages have become a new frontier for functioning space within the home.

The majority of homeowners use the garage as the main entrance way into their homes, making the garage door and its opener imperative to the security of the home, protecting the people and property behind it.

Before, garage doors only opened and closed to let your car in and out of the garage, and you had to be there to do it. But garage doors and openers have improved dramatically in the last decade to do more. If you’re interested in upgrading your home’s security and curb appeal, don’t forget to check out some of the newest high-tech features:

* Control from anywhere around the world: Garage door openers are high tech now, and the LiftMaster openers with MyQ Technology allow you to control your garage door – as well as other household items – from inside your house, while at the office or [more]

Friday Funnies

Garage Door Awareness: Safety First

You need to be aware of the possible hazards of garage doors and automatic opener systems, and the need for periodic inspection and maintenance to keep them safe. Give your garage door a safety check to insure it’s in proper working order by using these ten garage door safety and security tips.

1. Make sure garage door opener control button is out of the reach of small children.

2. Do not let children play with garage door remote controls.

3. Consult the owner’s manual and learn how to use the garage door’s emergency release feature.

4. Visually inspect the garage door each month. Look at springs, cables, rollers and pulleys for signs of wear. Do not attempt to remove, adjust or repair these parts or anything attached to them. A trained door repairman must make adjustments to these parts, which are under high tension.

5. Test the garage door openers reversing mechanism monthly 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, call a qualified garage door professional for repair. If the opener has not been replaced since 1993, seriously consider a new one with auto-reverse as [more]

Maintaining Your Own Garage Door

Don’t you just find it so annoying when you garage door remote doesn’t work?

You arrive home from a long day at work to find that when you press that remote control pad button, instead of opening smoothly, you door stops half open or just doesn’t open at all. Of course, you can call in a technician to fix the problem, but before you pay out for this expense, you can of course try and fix the problem themselves.

First things first, you need to check the power supply to the opener. If this is faulty, then it will immediately answer your question as to why it is failing. If you cannot find any fault here, then your next place to look will be that there is no dirt of obstruction that means that the sensors are not receiving the correct signal to open the garage door. The sensors of course need to be aligned properly so they will recognize the signal to open.

As your garage door is on the outside of your home, it is easy to forget about. It’s one of those things that constantly seem to be on your list of things to do, but never reaches the top [more]

A Day of Honor

Making the Right Choice for a Commercial Overhead Door:

At first, it may seem difficult to choose the optimum industrial or commercial sectional garage door. A good choice is one that really corresponds to the way the door will be used. Paying too much for a door may not be beneficial; paying too little may result in annoying and expensive repairs. Components that are not robust enough can become the source of high repair and maintenance costs.

  Step 1: Select a sectional door that will be suitable for your actual application

According to the application, as example fire / ambulance stations, warehouses, car / truck washes, manufacturing facilities, condo / apartment building, etc., use the appropriate sectional door (e.g.: 1 ¾’’ thick door, urethane injected, 26-gauge steel door).

Step 2: Choose the door system according to the degree of sturdiness you need

This depends mainly on the dimensions of the door, the material it’s made of and the number of daily open/close cycles it will undergo.  The torsion spring acts as a counterweight to facilitate the opening of the door. A key factor in the durability of a door is its hardware. Choosing a spring depends mainly on the daily number of open/close cycles your door will undergo. Choice: between 10,000 cycles [more]

Keep Your Garage Door in Tip-Top Shape

The garage door is one of those items you don’t think about too often. But when a problem arises suddenly, scrambling to get it up and functioning again is no fun. Performing some simple, routine maintenance can do much to prolong the life of your door and to ensure that it keeps doing its job for years to come.

Door Balance – Once every year, check that your garage door is properly balanced. A door that is off balance puts unnecessary pressure on the opener and could cause untimely wear on the door fittings.

With the garage door closed, look up and find the emergency release string that disconnects the door from the opener for manual opening. Pull the string, open the door to waist height. The door should be evenly balanced at this point and should not open or close but remain at his level without assistance.

If the door feels too heavy to lift manually, this is a good sign that the springs need adjusting. This is a job for the professionals, as door springs are under great tension and could cause injury if not properly handled.

Lubrication – Your door’s fittings require good lubrication to prevent rust and to allow smooth [more]

Friday Funnies: The Garage Door Opener of Days Gone Bye