Tag Archives: garage door opener
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With the cold weather, the following can you save you a lot of time and expense!
Keeping it Clean
Clean your garage door regularly with mild soap, such as car detergent, and a soft bristle brush. Avoid using abrasive cleaners and very strong liquid cleaners which could damage the paint or cause delaminating. If you have a steel garage door, you can revive its luster by applying a car wax as it will protect against acid rain and dust. It is best to avoid waxing in direct sunlight to achieve better results.
Weather Stripping
Clean the weather stripping with a good all-purpose cleaner. Lubricate it every 2 or 3 months with a SILICONE-based lubricant. Never use a petroleum-based lubricant on weather stripping as it will dry up and crack. Don’t forget the weather strip between your door panels. It is important to let your weather strip hang 1/2″ below the door base when you readjust your perimeter weather stripping. If the weather stripping is too tight, the door will not function properly. So if your weather stripping has lost its flexibility, it is best to replace it.
Maintaining the Hardware
Lubricate the rollers, tracks and hinges and all moving hardware parts with a little motor oil [more]
The All Purposeful Garage Door
Your garage door serves many purposes. It keeps your garage secure. It provides aesthetic appeal for your home. It also can be an energy efficiency product to help lower your energy bills.
You can get so much from a garage door that when it comes time to buy a replacement, you should shop smart. Make sure that the new one will be even better than the last. Do not settle for just any door. Shop around and be sure the model you get will serve all your purposes perfectly.
There are many considerations to make when choosing a new garage door. You should consider how you use the garage when making your choice. In some homes the garage is a playroom or a workshop in addition to keeping vehicles in out of the elements. How you use the garage will play into your final choice on a door.
You also need to make sure you get the right size of door. The wrong size of door will not serve any purpose. Take measurements carefully. Get help if you need it. Many retailers will offer help with taking measurements.
The appearance is also important. There are a range of styles, so you should try to [more]
Advancement in Energy Efficiency, Safety and Curb Appeal
The bitter cold of winter marks the time to rethink that garage door.
This is the season when homeowners usually make efforts to seal up the biggest opening in the home. It’s also a popular time for garage door replacement. It’s that time of year when weather has a distinct effect on the garage door business.
Steel isn’t a good insulator, so to compensate; manufacturers double up the panels and fill the space between them with polystyrene or polyurethane insulation. Polyurethane insulates better than polystyrene, but it tends to break down after a period of time, whereas polystyrene lasts forever.
Polystyrene is a flat, sheet-like material, similar to a Styrofoam cup. Polyurethane is pumped into a door as a liquid, then expands and fills the space between the metal sides of the door. There are some synthetic problems with polyurethane. It can dry erratically, leaving unprotected spots in the door. That problem is detectable when a homeowner sees granulated polyurethane draining from the door. A polyurethane-lined door, however, can often have a better R-value than the rest of the garage.
Polystyrene has a lower R-value, the insulation rating system, and also is less expensive. Single polyurethane doors are rated around R-15 and cost more.
Insulation [more]
Are Your Garage Doors, Fall Ready?
The kids head back to school. We watch as leaves change from green to hues of brown, gold, red and fiery orange in the crisp, cool autumn air. The busyness begins again and we find that many of us will scurry from activity to activity for months to come.
All this renewed activity results in extra work for every part of our homes..especially our garage doors. They go up and down as we leave for work, and come back again. We load the kids up for sports, and activities and are in and out of the garage all week.
Are your garage doors ready? Can they handle all the hustle and bustle that fall inevitably brings?
Your garage door opens up over the heads of yourself, your family, your cars, pets and stuff so they need to be in good working order. There are some common garage door problems that occur primarily in the fall and in early spring. When the seasons change, and the temperature starts to rise or fall it can bring with it garage door issues. These climate changes cause metal to contract and expand. When this happens, weak points in the metal on your garage door will begin to break.
1. [more]
Garage Doors & Home Security
The garage is an easy entry for unwanted people in our homes making garage security essential to protect yourself and your belongings. They are a popular target for criminals to get into your home and for obvious reasons. Some of our most expensive belongings are placed in there besides your car including bikes, lawnmower and power tools.
There are a few tips that you can use to ensure the safety of your family and home. Make sure that you invest in a good garage door and door opener. Some new openers, like the Liftmaster brand, have automatic locking feature on some models that make it much more difficult for any stranger to open. On a side note, when you have a new garage door opener installed, make sure the combination is reset, as the factory set combination is a familiar one to criminals.
It is important to understand the different security features that garage doors have. Most people aren’t aware how easy it is to simply open up a garage door. If you don’t have a proper garage door lock in place, for example, you will find that most doors are very easy to open.
Always try and look for a good system [more]
Good Time for Maintenance of Your Garage Door
On a busy day your garage door may open and close 20 times, so routine maintenance is a must to keep it in good working order. After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Regular garage door cleaning and maintenance will guarantee a great look and longer life of your door.
Appearance
Clean your garage door regularly with mild soap (like dishwashing detergent) and a soft bristle brush. Avoid using abrasive cleaners and very strong liquid cleaners which could damage the paint or cause delaminating. If you have a steel garage door, you can revive its luster by applying a car wax as it will protect against acid rain and dust. It is best to avoid waxing in direct sunlight to achieve better results. If there’s exposed wood, be sure to paint it.
Exterior Weather-Stripping
Clean the weather stripping around the frame and bottom edge with a good all-purpose cleaner. Lubricate it every 2 or 3 months with a Silicone-based lubricant to keep the stripping pliable. Never use a petroleum-based lubricant on weather-stripping as it will dry up and crack. Don’t forget the weather-strip between your door panels. It is important to let your weather-strip hang 1/2″ below the door base [more]
Don’t Wait Until Your Garage Door Doesn’t Work… Maintain It!
For those of you who have moved into a new home or have just installed a new garage door, be sure to take the time to thoroughly read the garage door owner’s manual. It may seem like a chore and take time, but one would be surprised at what they can find in most well written garage door manuals. The manual will contain safety and design information to help you insure that your garage door is safe to use and properly installed, and contain information on how to keep your garage door properly maintained.
For example, many garage door manuals will contain helpful tips for painting them. Most companies will tell you to pain BOTH the inside and outside of the garage door to keep everything even, and to never remove any parts of the garage door when painting. If you want to make sure that your garage door is completely covered in a fresh coat of paint, you need to call in a professional to dismantle it so that you can finish the paint job, and then have the garage door installed again. This usually does not happen, but again, do not try to dismantle any of the parts of [more]
A Blast from the Past
If you’ve ever seen the movie “Back to the Future,” you know why 1955 is significant. Writers used that particular year as part of the setting to illustrate small-town American life at the time. If we were able to hop in a time machine like Michael J. Fox and land in 1955 in small-town Connecticut, we’d discover the installation of an Overhead Door Corp. garage door opener at a lakeside home. When we decided we’d had enough of the 50s and wanted to come back to present day, believe it or not, that opener would still be working!
After recently purchasing a lakeside home built in 1955 in Columbia, Conn., homeowner Michael Matthews promptly began the renovation work that comes with buying and restoring an old home. That’s when he found a still working, 1955-era Overhead Door Model E Ultronic Door Opener in his garage.
“I love old machinery so when I saw this old opener I was just fascinated,” Matthews said. “The fact that it was still working was even better.”
Made of steel and weighing close to 50 pounds, the Model E Ultronic was an AC, chain-drive opener that, at the time, was state-of-the-art for its operational capabilities. It featured both [more]
Don’t Overlook The Garage When Getting Your Home Ready To Sell
There’s a lot of talk about curb appeal being the driving force drawing buyers into your home. It makes sense. If the house looks a mess from the outside, what buyer would want to set foot inside?
Well, maybe your house isn’t quite a mess. You have taken the time to fix-up the landscape, power-washed the house, and even painted the mailbox. But did you overlook what can be the biggest eyesore — the garage? It’s the largest architectural element on the house. So it really, in this day and age, is impossible to dismiss the garage door as an important architectural element.
But the garage door is more than an architectural element. It can be a trigger point for buyers. They’re driving down the street in a tract-home neighborhood and suddenly they spot a custom wooden garage door. It’s striking and different and often gives them reason to stop and take a closer look, maybe even come inside.
If you have a house that has a nice garage door, it sets the stage for the fact that everything else in the house is going to have attention to detail and it really does differentiate homes that are on the same street. With [more]