Garage and garage door safety is important all year round. But we shine a particularly bright light on the subject in June. The International Door Association (IDA) and Door & Access Systems Manufacturers Association (DASMA) have declared June to be Garage Safety Month. Often, the garage is the most frequently used entry to the home, so it is good to take a moment (or a month!) to think about potential dangers and make sure that everything is in working condition. Here are some tips to help keep you and your family and your property safe for this – and every other – month.
Visual Inspection
One of the most important – and easiest to forget – checks you can do is to visually inspect your garage door for significant wear and tear. Be sure to look at the springs, cables, rollers, and pulleys and if you do see damage, call a professional. These high tension parts can be extremely dangerous to try to fix yourself.
Testing the Reverse Mechanism
Make sure to test the garage door opener’s reversing mechanism regularly. With the door open, you can place a 2×4 board – or any similar item – in the path of the door. When you close the door, it should reverse its movement and open immediately after making contact with the board. If that does not happen, please call a professional to have the reverse feature fixed (or installed). This is vitally important for garage door safety.
Testing the Door Sensors
Make sure the door sensors successfully and reliably prevent your garage door from closing on an object in the path of your sensors. Aim to check these parts on a monthly basis.
Keeping Young Children from Controls
The garage door is usually the heaviest and largest moving object in the home,so we recommend keeping the remote controls inaccessible to young children. You might, for example, consider mounting the garage door opener control button at a significant height. This way children will not be able to operate the door and anyone using the opener will have a good view of the door.
Keeping Fingers Clear
You may have a garage door that opens manually. Or, due to a power outage or some other reason, you may find that you need to open or close your automatic garage door by hand. If you ever find yourself manually operating a garage door, please make sure that there are no fingers between the door sections. Yours or anyone else’s!
Keeping the Opener Secure
It is incredibly rare that someone would break into your home. But when it does happen, one relatively common method is for someone to steal a garage door remote. One way to help prevent that is to take your opener with you and keep it on your person rather than in your car. With increasingly smaller options for your garage door opener, this is becoming more and more convenient.
Making Your Door Smart
Applications now allow homeowners to monitor or control their garage doors remotely through their phone or other device. With these, you can check if your garage door is open, closed, being used, and more. In some cases, you can not only check if the door is open, but use the app to safely close the door.
If you have questions about any of this or want assistance with additional safety measures, please let us know! If you have any concerns about the safety or operation of your door, please do not hesitate to contact us. We want to make sure that you feel secure and are actually safe with the operation of your garage door. And there is better time to ensure that than during Garage Safety Month!