<p>Nobody asked about this, but there is another problem automatic garage doors can have if you have cats. When you leave the door open for awhile, sometime cats like to jump up onto the upperside of the door (so the cat is lying on the topside of the door while it is parallel to the garage ceiling). When the door closes, the cat gets caught in the crack at the top of the door. This kills many cats.</p>
<p>It’s why our household doesn’t have garage door openers. Someone please let me know if they develop a sensor for this, as I get tired of opening and closing my garage doors.</p>
<p>Is your garage attached or detached from your house? Either way, consider a garage door opener with a battery backup in case of an electrical outage. My sister-in-law has a detached garage with an old electric garage door opener. With a power outage that lasted a couple of hours, she couldn’t get her garage door to open. While the garage has a couple of windows for light, it didn’t have a separate entry door. I had to break a window and climb in to pull the manual release cord to pop the garage door open.</p>
<p>I love this thread- I didn’t know anyone actually had garages that they parked their cars in- ours is full of toolboxes & stuff. ( we also have french style doors- it’s a old garage.)</p>
<p>^^You must live in an area with a great climate, no rain, no snow, not cold or hot, not to use the garage. </p>
<p>This thread is worrying me again about our extension springs on the side. We have them. Aothough they have security cords, they are old, 50-60 years old. I showed them the garage guys when we replaced the garage door opener. They weren’t concerned. They just tried to sell me a new garage door.</p>
<p>If your springs are that old, they should be replaced. I would replace the doors, but that’s just me…</p>
<p>In all my years of working with garage doors and openers and handling every kind of consumer complaint, I never heard anything about cats sleeping on top of the open doors and getting caught. Much more likely to be crushed by a non-reversing door.</p>
<p>The problem with the reversing feature that depends on contact/pressure instead of the photocells is that the door can exert enough pressure before it reverses to kill or injure a pet or child. If the wood on the door is deteriorated, the door can exert downward pressure, buckle, and not reverse. I had a quad 3 year old case with that scenario. It was tragic. Just don’t sell your house with that equipment on it- or get a good release.</p>
<p>I don’t have the heart to replace the door. It is an original wooden door. In a great shape, I should add. The original owner, an archetect, built the house with a master carpenter. Replacing that with a fake fiber-glass door? How?</p>
Definitely true which is why the photoelectric sensor is so much better. </p>
<p>One problem is that the opener needs to be able to exert enough force to overcome the spring tension as well as just the mechanical resistance to movement in order to be able to close the door and a cat, dog, or small child could be injured before it’d reverse. The openers usually have adjustments for the ‘down force’ so ideally one would set this to the minimum down force needed in order to close the door before it decides to auto-reverse. The problem with this is that as the springs age and additional friction builds up (from not regularly lubricating the brackets for example), the force required to close the door can increase so the adjustment would need to be tweaked. Either that or the installer/repairer would do what many do which is to set the down force higher in the first place so they don’t need to do the tweaks.</p>
<p>If you have even a chance of a pet, child, or anyone, including the H or W, who might happen to be in the way of the door while someone else pushes the button then opener should be replaced with one with a photo electric sensor. Usually the wired button is located right next to the door to the house and it’s easy for people in the house to reach out and hit the button without really confirming there’s nothing (including the H or W) in the way of the door.</p>
<p>I use the sensor another way - sometimes I’m doing something with a car and have it where the door, if closed, could hit the car. To prevent this I just place something in front of the sensor to break the beam (you can confirm the beam’s broken by seeing the LED flash) which stops the door from closing at all. It’s quicker and easier than unplugging the opener and safer than just hoping no one pushes the button.</p>
<p>We replaced our wooden doors with insulated steel ones because they were rotting apart. The installer didn’t say anything about the old openers.</p>
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Why would selling my house with old openers create liability for me? They were legal when they were installed. Is there a legal requirement to upgrade?</p>
<p>Technically, openers without photocells should not pass a home inspection. </p>
<p>You would be selling a dangerous product with your home. The garage door is the largest moving object in your home. It is very heavy. At the end of the day you could prevail, but I assure you that you will be in the lawsuit if anyone gets hurt. You know the product isn’t safe because I’m telling you.</p>
<p>I’ve just seen too many tragic situations and there are reasons for the CPSC requirements.</p>
<p>Reviving the thread. The spring from 1953 finally broke. Actually, it’s not the spring that broke, it’s the cable that attach the spring to the lifting mechanism that broke. There was loud noise but no damage. A repairman will be here in a few hours.</p>