As I was scrolling through all of our D & D Garage Door blog posts deciding on the next beneficial topic to share with our readers I noticed a trend, a safety trend to be exact. Garage Door safety is so important to us and we need to make sure that our homeowners are educated when it comes to the safety of their home.
It’s hard to imagine that something as simple as your garage door can have so many safety issues to focus on, but it’s a fact, garage doors, if not carefully maintained and operated can be quite dangerous. One of these safety issues that I seem to find myself spending a lot of time talking to clients about are their safety sensors.
It always seems to happen the same way. A client calls and inquires about a remote for their garage door opener. I proceed to ask a few questions to determine what brand their opener is, it’s about this time that we discover they do not have safety sensors. The safety sensor is a very important part of your garage door opener operating system. It’s so important it’s a federal law that you must have them. Once we’ve established the fact that this customer has no safety sensors, I explain the dangers of not having them and help the customer find the right sensor for their door.
Today, I am going to touch on a few points that will educate you on garage door safety and how to keep your family safe:
What are safety sensors?
Well that is a very good question seeing as there are different types of sensors that help to tell your garage door what to do. Safety Sensors are typically attached to the rails on either side of the garage door. The purpose of these sensors is to alert the garage door when there are objects obstructing the beams of the sensors and this automatically makes the garage door stop from closing. This will protect whatever object is in the way, as well as the door. This is extremely important as you never want the garage door to slam down on a child, pet or any live person for that matter.
Get the right sensors for the job!
There are several options of safety sensors to choose from and usually your garage door company’s technician or sales representative will be able to recommend the best senor based on the operating system your door works with. Once that is established, an appointment is made for installation. There are DIY step-by-step videos and outlines on how to install these yourself, however we strongly recommend consulting a licensed technician as installation does require a few steps that do include the handling of wires and such.
What’s next?
When you go out your garage door today, double check that those safety sensors are attached. If not, give us, or your local garage door company a call! We’ll be glad to point you in the right direction!
