Troubleshooting Your Garage Door
When my husband and I moved into our house eight years ago, we accepted that some repairs and updates would be necessary to bring the home into this era. Our house was built in the 60’s and while it had a retro charm that made us fall in love with it, the same retro charm is what we are starting to dislike about it eight years later. The one thing that we just can not overlook, and neither can our neighbors or anyone else driving by the house, is our extremely outdated garage door. Someone who lived in our house prior to us thought that painting the metal garage door dark brown was a good idea. As a result, the paint is chipping and the old white garage door is revealing itself. To make matters worse, the door does not open sometimes and we have to use the manual override cord just to get our car out. We plan to replace the garage door with a newer model in the near future but for now, here are just a few tricks we found out work for garage door troubleshooting.
There is nothing more frustrating than your garage door not functioning and the panic that ensues when you contemplate how you are going to get to work if you can’t get your car out. I am a little ashamed to say that my initial thought was that I could just lift the garage door myself from the inside. This did not work and it is probably a good thing because I would be seriously concerned how safe my home is with a faulty garage door. After a panicky call to my husband, assuming he was an expert in garage door opening, I hung up frustrated and turned to the internet for help. Turns out, that little red handle that hangs down from the pulling system to your garage door is the way you manually open the garage door when the power or motor malfunctions. Who knew right? So suddenly I was the garage door expert and I was using all my strength to pull the door open manually. After about 5 minutes, I had successfully freed my car and was on my way.
Living in Ohio during the winter months, having a garage is a lifesaver and saves me so much time not having to scrape thick sheets of ice off the car. The only issue is, with cold weather also comes garage door malfunctions. Extreme cold weather can stiffen the mechanism that opens our garage door and result in a loss of power. I was completely unaware that this was an issue but apparently most garage doors made in the past 15 years allow you to adjust the pressure for raising and lowering. The garage door pressure can be adjusted every season to ensure that it runs properly. Unfortunately, our garage door was likely original to the 1960’s construction and does not have an adjustment setting. So when the door decides to stall on me because of the cold, I resort back to manually opening it.
After all the mishaps that we have encountered with our old garage door, it was apparent that we needed a replacement. I have been looking into more modern garage doors that will create curb appeal for our house. I thought we could cut costs by trying to install a garage door ourselves but after reading horror stories about injuries, and even deaths resulting in DIY garage door repair/replacements, I think it would be best if we leave the replacement to the professionals. I never thought I would get so excited about a new garage door but when you have to manually open your garage 50% of the time, it becomes a necessity!