Garage doors play an important part in enhancing your house’s aesthetics while also ensuring its security. It protects your car by giving you a place to park it in such a way that it doesn’t have to be out in the open. But every year, tens of thousands of Americans get hurt because of various accidents caused by their garage doors. So it’s very important to follow a few garage door safety tips.
One of the first things you should do to ensure your garage door is safe is to make sure the remote to the garage door opener isn’t reachable by children. You also mustn’t run under or hand from the garage door. Regular safety checks and performing regular maintenance are other ways of ensuring garage door safety.
Let’s take a detailed look at how to keep your garage door safe.
How you can ensure garage door safety
Despite garage doors being designed to protect you, your family, and your car safe, it is one of the major reasons people suffer from various injuries every year. This is because they don’t know how to make the garage door safe for everyone. Here are a few tips to keep your garage doos safe so that you don’t suffer their fate:
1. Ensure children can’t get their hands on the garage door opener remote
One thing you should make clear to your children is that garage doors are not toys and they can and will get hurt if they consider it so. But as we know, children more often than not don’t listen to adults straightaway. So you should ensure that they don’t get hurt by ensuring garage door opener safety by keeping its remote in such a place that children can’t reach it.
But keeping the remote in an out-of-reach place won’t be enough. If you have daring children at your home, they will do everything in their power to get their hands on the remote. So you should also keep various climbing tools such as ladders, stools, chairs, etc in such a way that these can’t be used by children.
2. Don’t run under or hang from the garage door
One of the main reasons people get hurt by garage doors is when they run under a closing door. Most modern doors have sensors that reverse their path if they sense something in their way. But even then, it’s not intelligent to run under a moving garage door. Not only do you run the risk of getting pinned under the heavy door, but you can also hit your head on it and knock yourself out.
Another thing people, especially children tend to do a lot is to hang from an opening door. As mentioned above, garage doors should never be considered toys. So discourage your children from hanging from garage doors, especially when they’re opening. If someone hangs from garage doors, it won’t be able to handle the added weight and will collapse, causing serious injuries.
3. Perform regular checks on overhead door safety devices
There are a lot of garage door safety features that ensure the house owners and their children and pets don’t get hurt. But these devices and features have to be checked regularly to ensure they’re working properly. If they are not checked up on, they can malfunction, and you might end up injured or worse because you believed they’d work properly.
4. Ensure the garage door is regularly maintained
There are four components of a garage door. They are springs, rollers, pulleys, and cables. All of these components have to be regularly maintained to ensure your garage door works properly. If any of these components fail to work, your door won’t be able to open or close properly and will not only be a security threat but can also injure you and damage your car. If you find any of the components not working properly, to ensure safety, garage door repair services must be called.
5. Check out the auto-reverse feature
The auto-reverse feature consists of a garage door safety sensor that ensures the path of the door’s movement reverses if the sensor picks up something to be in the door’s path. But if the sensor is not working, it will not pick up any object or animal, or child in its way, leading to damages and injuries. That’s why you must regularly check whether the auto-reverse feature works.
6. Mind your fingers
Another common way people get hurt by garage doors is when they put their fingers on various sections of a closing garage door. This is extremely dangerous as fingers can get caught between these sections. You mustn’t touch your garage door when it is moving. You must also tell your children to be aware of this.
7. Change garage door codes regularly
If you have keypads on your garage doors, ensure you change their codes regularly. As a result, not only children but any unwanted person will not be able to enter your garage without you knowing. You can also use a keypad that changes the entering code every time it is entered.
8. Always keep the garage door closed
Never keep your garage door ajar, as it will leave you open to unwanted visitors and will also endanger your and your family members’ safety. It will also endanger the safety of your car and other belongings that are in the garage.
9. Keep the door locked
In addition to keeping the garage door closed, you must also keep the door connecting the garage and your home locked. As a result, you will be safe from dangers that can be caused by thieves, etc.
10. Always unplug the door when going away
If you are not going to be in your home for a few days, always leave the door unplugged before going away. This way your door can’t be opened by someone else, such as a stranger or your children.
Final Words
Keeping yourself, your family members and your property safe from garage door-caused damages are very important. This is where the aforementioned garage door safety tips come into play. Make sure you follow every one of them so that you don’t end up being another number in the already worrying statistics of people getting injured by garage doors.
FAQs
1. How do I make my garage door safer?
There is plenty of ways to make your garage door safer. You can install home security systems, and keypads, install windows made of strong glass, put motion detectors in place, etc.
2. How do you burglar-proof a garage door?
To ensure burglars can’t enter your garage, you can put security films behind your tempered glass windows, ensure your keypad code doesn’t get leaked, hide your remote, etc.
3. Can someone break in through the garage door?
Most people think that burglars only break in through the garage window or when the door is kept open. But garage doors are equally prone to be broken in thorough by burglars. They can even break through the garage doors with a coat hanger.
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