Yesterday morning, while starting to do fall yard work, I hit the button to open the garage door. It went about a quarter of the way up and then just stopped. I hit the button again, but there was nothing. It was a chain-driven mechanism, so I thought maybe it had slipped its gear (like a bike), but no such luck. Which led to Christopher and me doing some quick research on garage door openers and then stopping at the hardware store to pick one up on the way to a concert by the Valley Chamber Chorale in Stillwater last night.
I brought the instructions in with me last night and used them as my bedtime reading. It all seemed easy enough--once I got beyond the idea of having to do some basic wiring while holding heavy objects suspended 6 or 7 feet off the floor. Luckily, since we already had an automatic garage door opener, I didn't have to mount as much hardware as I might have otherwise.
I started around 9:15 this morning, and had done pretty well until I had to try to affix the wires to the ceiling. The staples were fussy about getting pounded into the ceiling, but Christopher came out to offer his support (and his larger hammer) and we got those taken care of. So there I was, about 4 hours later, with a fully-mounted garage door opener.
Finally, I had gotten to the point where I could plug it in and try it out.
The motion sensor turned on the lights. The auto-reverse worked. I played with the up and down distance, and followed up with the "force" adjustments. It was doing great. I was all set to go inside the house and declare success, but decided to try it one more time. Yeah. You know where this is going. About 2:15 I gave up for the day, having spent about 45 minutes with the door only going up about halfway--probably caused by me trying to adjust the Up and Down positions without the door slamming into the concrete.
For the record, I don't think this is my fault. We discovered that we have a broken spring on one side of the door, which probably explains why the door seems to be overly heavy (4 springs--2 on each side--are supposed to keep the door balanced). It might also explain why the whole door was going so slowly up and seeming to slam down, even though this opener has a stronger motor than the one that has been in the garage for years.
Long story short-ish: Tomorrow we have someone coming by to check out the door. We might be replacing 2 springs. Or all 4 springs. Or the entire door. I gotta admit that I'd be okay with any of that, as long as the opener eventually works. My handyman ego is pretty fragile.
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