If you park your car in your garage every day, your automatic garage door might be the most-used entry to your home. It’s also the biggest door at your house and can pose serious hazards if not maintained properly.
Here are some maintenance and safety tips
for the garage door.
- Keep the garage door closed when you’re not using it. Leaving it open and unattended is an invitation to thieves and animals.
- Don’t allow your kids to make a game out of opening and closing the garage door, even when you’re supervising them. A garage door closes quicker—and is much heavier—than you might expect and can present a serious hazard to a small child who gets in its way.
- If your garage door has panels or sections, keep fingers clear. The pinch points between panels can exert enough pressure to break or even sever a finger. Consider investing in pinch-resistant door panels to prevent accidents.
- Inspect the garage door a couple of times a year for wear and tear on springs, cables, rollers and pulleys.
- Regularly test the door’s reversing mechanism—its ability to automatically reopen if something gets in its way while closing. If the door doesn’t reverse properly, call a garage door professional to repair it.
- Replace any garage door opener bought before 1993. Newer ones have safety beams and auto-reverse mechanisms as standard features.
- Consider disabling your garage door before going on vacation. Most models have a security switch on the wall console that allows you to turn off the remote.
- Let qualified professionals handle any repair work your garage door might need. Managing the door’s large size, operating system and moving parts takes some expertise.