Garage Door Opener

Well, my fun for the last couple of days began Sunday morning. I was getting ready to go to church and went out to the garage. I pushed the button to open the door and heard a very loud noise, turned around to see my door still closed and heard the motor still running on the opener. My first thought was, "This is not good." I pushed the button again to stop the motor and then climbed into the bed of my truck to take a look at what happened. I saw the chain was very slack, though pulling on it revealed that it was still attached as it should have been. Looking at the opener itself showed a small plastic piece sitting on it, this of course couldn't have been that loud noise and since it was plastic would not have held a chain, however looking at where the plastic came from showed me a slightly uneven metal surface, which as I saw that also showed something on the floor I had walked past. The gear that turns the chain on my opener had been sheered off by the force created by the opener trying to open a door that had ice holding it down. Great, so I had a broken opener. I manually opened the garage door and pulled the vehicles out, I knew I would be frustrated having to keep opening and closing the door manually so it would be easiest to just park outside. After this I went to church, my mind still on the problem I now faced. I set things up and then gave my dad a call, he's a handy guy so maybe he knew how to replace a garage door opener (I surely didn't, I'm not that handy yet). He did, to my delight, and we decided it would be best to do the following day after work.

After an anxious day at work, in which I educated myself on the different openers, I went home and my dad was already there. I talked to him about what I had learned and what my plan was, he didn't object to it and even said he didn't know a few of the things I mentioned. What I had told him was this: that I found 4 types of openers, a chain one, being the oldest design and likely cheapest, was also the noisiest and since it was the type that had just broke I had even more bias against it. The next one was a belt model, this one used a rubber belt, like the one in your car, to open the door, this was the quietest one. The next one I told him about was a direct drive model, it seems to be the newest type and the opener moves with the door instead of pulling it on its own towards it. There wasn't enough information on this one so I opted to avoid it. The last model, the one that my dad had experience in, was the screw drive type, this one was the 2nd quietest according to my research and delivered power in a more direct manner, this is what I decided I wanted. There were two models available to me, a 1/2 horse power unit and a full horse power unit. I already had been using a 1/2, so I knew it would work, but I wasn't convinced it was the right choice given that my door was pretty heavy. So, figuring there was no harm in it, we got the full horse power unit. Installing it wasn't too hard, it just took some time to do and it was good that there were two of us, and once we had it all properly set up and calibrated I got to push the button to close and open it for the first time, which would finish the programming. Closing it worked as anticipated, it closed smoothly and completely, and then opening it revealed a nice surprise. It started to open slowly, slower than my old unit, and then suddenly it took off and opened very quickly. I realized the slow part was to avoid the type of damage I had just encountered the other day and then the speed was impressive, even my dad said "Wow" to how quickly this thing worked.

So in the end my research paid off, I was an informed consumer and got what I thought would be right and it was much cheaper than paying someone else to do it. Though if I ever have to replace the door, I'm not doing it, I've heard some things about that and I just won't even try. So if you are like me and find that you have to replace the opener, don't worry, it can be done with a couple of people who don't have to be professionals, they just need some patience to understand the instructions and take it slow. Also, make sure you take the time to research and figure out what will work best for you, it will help you to make a more confident decision and hopefully lead to fewer feelings of making a mistake.