Author Archives: 1st United Door Technologies
JUNE: IT’S GARAGE DOOR SAFETY MONTH!
The International Door Association and the Door & Access Systems Manufacturers Association have designated June as Garage Door Safety Month.
The International Door Association and its affiliated dealers will be working to increase awareness 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 opener’s 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 [more]
Garage Door Safety Tips
While working in the garage the other day, my next door neighbor was outside playing with his toddler son, in front of my driveway. Just as I was wrapping up my project and on my way into the house, I made sure the coast was clear, hit the button for the garage door and it began to close. The last beams of daylight were just beginning to disappear when I suddenly noticed out of my peripheral vision, a pair of legs, belonging to that toddler, standing about a foot from my closing garage door. I quickly hit the door button and fortunately for myself, the little toddler and his father, the door came to an abrupt stop. Talk about close calls!
According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, garage door related accidents account for an astonishing 20,000 emergency room visits every year. The types of injuries range from crush injuries to fractures and worse. And those are just the incidents that were reported. If those numbers don’t impress you, then check these numbers out:
77.6% of garage door injuries happen at a person’s own home.
37.7% of injuries occur in the summer months. (June-Aug)
59% of injuries involve caught or cut fingers and [more]
How to choose and match exterior colours on your home, including the garage door
The challenge in choosing exterior colour is to find the right balance between standing out and fitting in.
Often the biggest colour decisions have been made by the time you get to choosing exterior paint colours: the brick, the stone elements, and your roof. To help you see these materials as colours, match each of them to a paint chip. This is a quick and effective aid to developing your home’s exterior palette. Add a paint chip for the roof and you are ready to go.
Next, choose your main trim colour , and when you do, be extremely wary of white. There is very little White in nature so stark white can look artificial and inelegant. Be sure that any whites you use are what designers call “toned” whites. These look off–white or warm grey as paint chips but will still look very white against brick and stone. They’re softer and more pleasing to the eye.
Make the laws of colour perception work for you when assigning colours to the architectural features of your home. Light things grab our attention and they also tend to look big (which is why some of us favour black workout clothing). Take stock of your facade, [more]
Residential Garage Door Openers: The New Trends
When examining the latest developments in the residential opener market, one characteristic is clearly paramount among the others.
Consumers are exhibiting a preference for openers that are quiet. Historically, the need for near silent operation hasn’t made the list of consumer demands. In fact, when major manufacturers polled consumers in an effort to uncover their desires, quiet operation didn’t even make the list of top 10 features on their wish list until recently.
So what’s driving this need for quieter residential garage door openers? There have been major changes to new housing structures over the past 15 to 20 years. For example, the detached garage has been replaced by an attached garage in an effort to give homeowners even greater comfort and protection from the elements. Common floor plan designs have the garage adjacent to living areas such as the family room or kitchen, which results in the noise generated from garage door openers being a concern.
As urban sprawl set in and space became more of a scarcity in many communities, home builders began to build two-story homes in an effort to increase the available square footage without using more land. This upward footprint usually takes advantage of the space above a [more]
Garage Door Innovation
A British company has an idea to make garage doors more energy-efficient and useful to a home: Make them generate heat.
Garage Door Restore, based in Blackpool, England, has created garage doors that use methods such as air-source heat pumps and solar panels to generate warmth. To create the prototype, the company partnered with a Lancaster University professor and two full-time students, who together will begin production.
The garage doors and the technology used inside them will be displayed at CUBE, the Manchester architecture and design center dedicated to developments in engineering. The firm will then take the display on the road to exhibit at different shows across Europe, where strict many government-imposed energy-efficiency requirements have spurred similar innovations.
Garage Door Restore is a branch network of contractors affiliated with manufacturer Complete Door Engineering.
How to Prevent Garage Door Accidents
Garage door accidents, like so many accidents in the home, could be avoided if more care and attention was paid.
A garage is not essentially a play area or a work area, but a place to store your vehicle and household items. You should therefore never let children play around in an open door, especially when we are talking about traditional spring doors, as you are creating a danger zone.
Garage doors should be kept closed. They are not really designed to stay open, and if they were used correctly, then many accidents would be prevented. Although the springs in a traditional garage door are designed to hold a garage door open at half way up, springs can fail at any moment, the garage door falling abruptly down.
Keeping up to date with your garage maintenance is really important if you wish to prevent door accidents. A simple once over, periodically to make sure that none of the moving parts or hardware of the door are broken is all it takes to prevent so many accidents. If you do the simple test of leaving your door half way up, you should be able to determine if the torsion springs are in good order [more]
How Not To Repair a Garage Door
It’s a fact: I don’t like to pay someone else to do something that I can dobetter. Well, at least that’s the theory. The reality is that I’m cheap, and I hate to let my money go on long trips without me. So, I often repair things that I should never mess with, just to save a few bucks. A classic example of my penny-pinching foolishness dates from about 1986, when I tried to repair my own garage door.
I didn’t have a fancy automatic garage door back then. I just had a manual unit: drive up, get out, lift the door, get back in, drive in, get out, close the door. Everything was fine with my little garage door, but I felt that it could be a tad easier to lift. So, I decided to adjust the spring tensioning mechanism myself. Who needs a professional, right? Mull on that last line for a few minutes…
Garage doors are heavy, and without the springs, all you’ve got is dead weight — too heavy to lift. To adjust the door, I had to tinker with the spring coiling components — it’s the coiling process that makes the door easier to maneuver. When I [more]
Artist Takes On ‘Unattractive’ Graffiti
Gallery owner Bob Daniels figured if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
After cleaning up graffiti and battling taggers for years, he’s showing the city that there’s more to graffiti than vandalism.
Local artist Bryce Huffman is painting a mural on the garage door of Earls Court Gallery, in a back alley off Ottawa Street North, to cover unsightly “hip-hop” tags. “I always thought that alley strip that Rick Mercer passes during his rants was so cool. Some of that (art) is amazing,” Daniels said. But in this back alley, taggers have spoiled walls and doors, fences and cars. “I think what annoys me is that it’s totally unattractive, total disregard. Why does this jerk think I want to look at that?” Daniels asks, pointing to a pair of “tags” on a neighboring wall.
To help clean up, Hamilton introduced a commercial property improvement grant (CPIG) in 2001 to help small businesses improve their spaces. Business owners in any of the city’s 13 business improvement areas can apply once a year for 50/50 funding for improvements to their facades — including murals.
Legally, the onus is on property owners to remove graffiti. There are volunteer groups that help with removal, but professional chemical [more]