How To Keep Your Garage Door Safe

The heavy door on your garage opens and closes easily because of a set of high-tension springs, pulleys and cables that counterbalance the weight of the door. The garage door mechanism has built in safety features to prevent accidental injury to people should a failure occur. It's a good idea to periodically do the following inspections and tests to make sure your garage door remains safe.

Garage Door Spring Safety Cables

The springs are under a lot of tension and, should they break or become disconnected at one end, they could fly across the garage and cause serious damage to someone. A safety cable running through the springs prevents this from happening. Inspect the safety cables periodically to make sure the springs are under control.

  1. Find the springs running just under and parallel to the ceiling.
  2. Look for a braided steel cable running through the center of each spring.
  3. Check that one end of the cable is securely connected to a bracket on the ceiling and off to the side of the opener motor.
  4. Check that the other end is connected to a bracket on the wall or to the metal channel off to the side of the top of the garage door.
  5. Look for any bends, kinks or fraying of the steel cable.
  6. If you notice any problems with the cable or connections, contact a garage door repair company, like Casp Enterprises Ltd Garage door repair, to correct the problems.

Motion Sensors

The small boxes on either side of the garage door near the floor are infrared motion sensors. They are designed to stop the door from going down should something get in the way, such as a child on a tricycle. These can be easily inspected to make sure they are working correctly.

  1. Open the garage door.
  2. Find a ball or other round object that you can roll across the infrared beam.
  3. Push the button to close the garage door.
  4. While the door is going down, roll the object over the floor and through the door so it breaks the infrared beam.
  5. The door should stop immediately and reverse.
  6. If it doesn't, contact a repair company soon to fix the problem.

Pressure Sensor

The opener motor also has a built in sensor to detect when the door meets some resistance as it goes down. This adds a level of safety should the motion sensors fail.

  1. Open the garage door.
  2. Place a chair in the path of the garage door so the legs straddle the infrared beam without breaking it.
  3. Close the garage door.
  4. When the door touches the chair, it should immediately stop and reverse.
  5. If the door continue down briefly after touching the chair or it fails to reverse, contact a repair company soon.

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