Guarantee safety, avoid injuries and avert unnecessary garage door repairs in your Clearwater home by knowing how your automatic garage door safety features work. Our quick guide will enable you to understand the basics of your garage door safety features, so when you hire a well-recommended local garage door service in Clearwater, FL, you’ll know their language.
Most garage door in households use the same working principals. A large entryway moves on rollers installed in a track system. The garage door opener, typically mounted in the middle of the garage helped with springs gives the pulling power to bring the garage door up and down.
Nonetheless, without the weigh-reducing help of the springs, the opener motor wouldn’t have the capacity to pull up or down the garage door. Let’s find out how the garage door safety features help keep everything around the garage running smoothly:
Are garage doors safe?
Since the garage door is usually the most significant moving item inside a home, modern garage door opening systems include a few key safety features that protect your family, kids, and, pets from death or injuries because of accidents. These features also protect your car from unnecessary dings or damage while parking or backing up.
Auto-reverse feature
The top security feature is an automatic reversal system inside the garage door opener. When the entryway is closing but senses an object or person, the entryway will stop and return to the open position. After 1991, the U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission has required all auto-reverse feature on all new garage door openers.
Since garage door springs and openers can weaken or wear after some time, it’s critical sometimes to test the security feature. For example, open the carport, place an item, such as a football or cement brick where the entryway will close. Remember, never test any security feature using your body or a family member as a test subject. With the ball or cement block set up, press the close catch. When working appropriately, the garage door will close on the object and quickly reverse back when it interacts with it.
Motion sensors
Another critical safety highlight to keep accidents from happening is the electric eye sensor found on many modern garage door systems. Sensors set on both side of the garage door track around six inches off the ground transmit an infrared beam of light during an entryway’s closing operation. Should anything pass by the laser during the process including people, pets, or different items like the car – the opener will stop and reverse direction.
You can use the manual release to disengage the garage door if a malfunction occurs
The last safety feature on a garage door is the manual release system. It is intended to disconnect the garage door from the opening system should an issue occur. Often, when a power outage or other breakdown happens, the manual release system gets engaged. You could typically find it on the track that runs from opener to the garage door. It’s a red handle that’s located about 6 feet off the ground.
Should an item or individual become caught, or if a glitch happens, pulling on the handle will enable the homeowner to lift the entryway up or down manually. When a garage door springs are working great, the spring system will give the entryway support so a person can lift the entryway with practically no effort.
Each of the three security features needs to be tested to guarantee they’re in working order. If any of the garage door features fail or malfunction, please call a garage door repair expert to fix or replace them.
Conclusion
If the opener was made before 1993, and it doesn’t have security sensors, consider purchasing another garage door opener with auto-reverse.
Since you now comprehend how your garage door safety features work, you need to make sure that they work all the times correctly. That is the top reason why you need regular garage door maintenance performed by a certified professional.