Tag Archives: DIY
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 Great Fix-Up Starts with your Garage Door
What’s the one home fix-up project that takes only a couple of hours and yields the biggest bang for the buck of any exterior home renovation?
Here’s a clue: This project adds style, energy efficiency and security to your home and the preparation is easy and mess free – all you need is an Internet connection and a telephone. For most people, the answer does not immediately come to mind: it’s a stylish new garage door.
Think about it. If your house has an attached garage, the garage door may comprise more than one-third of your home’s front facade. If that home is more than five years old, your garage door probably is a solid colored, raised-panel door that looks like every other garage door in the neighborhood.
A new door, quickly and correctly installed by a local professional, will differentiate your home and add style, value and curb appeal. The hottest new style in garage doors is the carriage house design. It’s available in steel, wood or composite materials and in many price ranges.
A garage door is an important home improvement project. It is typically the first thing people notice when they pull into your driveway or pass your house. Doors also [more]
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]