Since we move into our house nearly 18 months ago we’ve been dealing with the super-annoying “sometimes it works” garage door opener. Or perhaps “garage door closer” is more accurate. In the olden days garage doors just closed, and if you got crushed it was your own damn fault. Somewhere along the way (in the name of “safety”) manufacturers added “External Entrapment Protection Systems”, which are typically an infrared emitter and an electric eye that sees the beam from the emitter. When the beam is interrupted (like when a stupid child runs under the closing garage door) the door reverses and does not close. No child crushed, no harsh lessons in being careless learned.
Look, I’m not in favor of crushing children, but with the sun shining directly at our garage opening, 75% of the morning we’d leave the house we couldn’t use the remote to close the garage door. I didn’t want to completely disable the sensors, as it would probably get us sued if a child did get crushed. Also, I’m all for safety. (Really. I am. Tell the insurance company that.)
My first attempt at a fix was adding a gaff tape flag to the electric eye. This did almost nothing. I did find that blocking the sun with my car and/or body sometimes worked. So imagine that when I pulled the car out of the garage I had to get out and stand in front of the door (very close to it, in fact, almost close enough to be hit by the door) and try to block the sun. Sometimes it worked, and often it did not. When it didn’t work we’d have to go into the garage, use the manual release to shut the door, lock it, and then reverse the whole procedure when returning home. #PITA
Eventually I added a button (duh!) to attempt to manually override the sensor. Sometimes it worked, other times it did not. Occasionally it would get 90% closed, then open again. Argh! Reflecting light? I don’t know…
Supposedly you can added some tubes, but I never got around to that. The garage not closing when you leave is just annoying enough to aggravate you, but not annoying enough to spend real time trying to fix it.
The new solution (which is working well so far) involves extending the electric eye a bit further in from the door, and angling it to point at the emitter. Some scrap wood and zip ties pulls it all together quite nicely.
Here’s our new set-up. Granted, there is a bit more room where something could get crushed, but it probably won’t be me, because now I don’t need to stand centimeters from the door as it’s closing.
