How to Make Garage Doors Safer for Children and Pets
If you are concerned about the danger your overhead garage door may pose to children and pets, there are several preventative actions you can take, as we discuss in this article. Today, A Better Garage Door is here to share some top garage door safety tips for pets and children, tips that should help the whole household to coexist happily and safely with your current garage door installation. Read on to find out how you can protect your family and furry friends, with a relatively small investment of your time and money.
Child and Pet Safety Measures During Overhead Door Installation
All of the following measures will help to make the area around your garage door, and the door itself, a safer place for small pets and children. If you don’t fully understand how to complete a particular measure that we cover, you may wish to consider hiring a local garage door repair and maintenance expert to do it for you. Although it is always satisfying to complete DIY projects around the home, it is better to be safe than sorry where heavy overhead garage doors are concerned.
Teach Your Children About Garage Door Safety
The best way to ensure your children do not accidentally endanger themselves through a lack of knowledge or understanding is to educate them, about how the garage door works and about how everything else around the home works. Armed with this information, they will be better able to make the right safety decisions and to take care of themselves when operating all manner of domestic devices and equipment.
Always Supervise Garage Door Operation by Junior Family Members
If there is one particular safety measure that every garage door installation and repair specialist agrees is the most important, it is probably this one. Even after teaching your children how to operate your garage door safely, we recommend that you do not let them do so unsupervised. Make sure that a responsible adult is always in the area when your children are opening or closing the garage door. This person should, of course, be familiar with basic garage door safety guidelines and be ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice.
Seal All Visible Garage Door Gaps
A close-fitting garage door helps to prevent heat loss in the winter months and overheating in the summertime. More importantly, it helps to prevent curious fingers from coming to a bad end when poked in gaps between the door and the door frame. A heavy overhead door can easily crush an adult’s finger, let alone a child’s, which is why it is imperative to seal any gaps that you may find when performing a close visual inspection of your overhead door installation. Broomfield and Parker residents are, of course, always more than welcome to take advantage of our services if they would rather have a professional handle the work.
Make Sure Auto-Reverse Functionality Is Enabled
All well-designed modern garage doors are fitted with an adjustable auto-reverse safety feature. This feature usually consists of photoelectric sensors that are linked to the central control panel. If an obstruction is detected by the sensors when the garage door is closing, a message will be sent to the control panel, telling it to stop and reverse the door-closing procedure. This helps to prevent injury to persons and property damage when closing overhead doors. Some models allow the owner to defeat this safety feature but if you want to protect your children and pets, we strongly urge you to leave it enabled at all times.
Always Use a Lock Bar
One of the simplest ways to ensure that your garage door is never opened or closed without you being present to supervise operations is to use a lock bar. All of our garage door repair and installation technicians use a lock bar at home, for both safety and security reasons. This handy and readily available accessory will keep your garage door safely closed until you decide to unlock it. For parents of mischievous children and owners of consistently curious pets, the lock bar can be an extremely handy device, offering lasting peace of mind.
Keep the Remote Out of Reach
If you have young children in your home, children who may still be too young to truly appreciate the very real danger that a garage door can pose, we recommend keeping your garage door remote out of their reach at all times. This action, like many of our suggestions, is not difficult to take but can make a big difference to the safety of your children and your family pets too.
Schedule Regular Maintenance Inspections
Garage doors will often function flawlessly for many years without any help from us, which can make it tempting for us to forget all about them until something goes wrong. However, investing a little care and attention in your garage door can pay big dividends. By performing a close visual inspection every few months, you can help to ensure that your garage door never causes you any major problems in the future. Be sure to check all moving components and to apply more lubrication if required (some components may benefit from cleaning before applying fresh lubrication: please refer to the manufacturer's handbook for specific instructions).
Train Your Canines
As garage door installation and repair specialists, we have noticed during visits to local homes that dogs can be trained to be more aware of the dangers that overhead doors may pose to them. Having witnessed firsthand how useful this can be, we can certainly recommend this course of action to homeowners across the country.
Add Motion Sensor Lighting Outside Your Garage
If you would like to make sure that there are never any accidents around the garage door area because of poor visibility, you may like to think about installing motion-activated lighting on your property. Whether this is a practical idea will depend on your specific location and the type of wildlife that lives there.
If you manage to implement all of the above safety suggestions, your children and pets should have little to fear from your garage door. If you have a door that is in a poor state of repair, you may like to consider a new garage door installation to keep yourself and your family safe. Readers in Parker and Broomfield are, as always, welcome to call and speak to us about their garage door needs at any time.
Schedule Regular Maintenance Inspections
Garage doors will often function flawlessly for many years without any help from us, which can make it tempting for us to forget all about them until something goes wrong. However, investing a little care and attention in your garage door can pay big dividends. By performing a close visual inspection every few months, you can help to ensure that your garage door never causes you any major problems in the future. Be sure to check all moving components and to apply more lubrication if required (some components may benefit from cleaning before applying fresh lubrication: please refer to the manufacturer's handbook for specific instructions).
Review our previous garage door safety guide for additional tips from our Broomfield garage door service team.