With anything mobile and heavy, safety should always be your number priority. It should not be relegated to the back of your mind but should instead be at the forefront of every decision involving something like a heavy door that's frequently over your head. Make sure that you, your family and your car are safe by addressing the safety issues that follow.
Hire a Professional for Maintenance
If a problem starts rearing its ugly head in your garage, then the best thing to do would be to contact a professional garage door company. Even if you're a handy do-it-yourselfer, you can't be too cavalier about your safety when dealing with something that is potentially very dangerous. Over the past decades, accidents have resulted in lost limbs and even lives due to improper handling of garage door parts such as the torsion spring. To be certain that you keep all of your fingers, let the professionals do the maintenance work for you. They know what they're doing and they have the right tools and spare parts to do the job. Your door and opener won't require frequent maintenance checks, but it is better to have a fairly regular checkup done to prevent drastic failure and breakdown of their components in the future. By having occasional maintenance and safety checks, you are minimizing the likelihood of there ever being a catastrophic mechanical or electronic failure in your garage that could potentially cause injury to you and damage to your car or house.
Causes for Door Opener Mishaps
The main function of an opener is to lift the door open and to bring it slowly back down to close. This ingenious electromechanical device can only perform its purpose if the right conditions are met. These conditions include the correct power source, an intact switch, controller and receiver, undamaged gears, chains and parts, the right settings and a door that's within its capacity. Much like any other machine, an opener will fail or break down if any of these conditions are not sufficiently met. It doesn't even have to directly involve the opener since if you have a faulty broken spring, your opener is going to be carrying more of the load during its operation. This could be too much and the result would be a door that rapidly falls. Other causes of an uncontrolled and rapidly dropping door may involve the cables, the chains, and gears. Since your opener also has electronic parts, these are also potential causes of mishaps and sources of possible dangers.
Safety Settings on Your Garage Door Opener
Modern openers now come with safety features that are designed to prevent life-threatening accidents from happening. These include the use of sensors that when tripped would signal the motor to retract the door. Without this, anyone, especially small children, and pets could get crushed underneath the lowering door. Because of their placement, these parts frequently get dirty, hit and misaligned. However, even if this is the case, a good sensors maintenance will ensure that the photo eyes remain functional when they are most needed. Another safety feature that saves lives is the automatic reverse mechanism. When the door makes contact with an obstacle before it reaches the ground it should immediately go up. The system should be sensitive enough that the door does not exert too much pressure on the object in question before retracting. If the door applies too much pressure, this operator is considered dangerous. This safety setting can be adjusted easily by turning the force sensitivity dials found either at the back of the motor box or to the side of it, depending on the type and make of the unit. If you have already adjusted the settings and the sensitivity is still not right, then your opener may require professional garage door opener maintenance to be safe.