Regular friends of the decanter may recall that I recently noted the apparent descent of the port-swiller garage door opener into some kind of nervous breakdown. Well, as of yesterday, I can report that the thing has gone utterly off the deep end and that it’s time to summon the men in the white coats. While the engine hums along merrily enough, it no longer moves the chain one way or the other, suggesting that the little plastic cog-wheel in the bowels of the thing has finally stripped itself.
Oh, well.
I started noodling over whether it made sense to get the unit fixed or to replace it altogether. (It’s at least twelve years old, but most of the bits are still in good working order.) To this end, I wandered over to the LiftMaster website, where I stumbled across this little ditty:
| Position on Garage Door Openers Manufactured Prior to 1993 |
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We are committed to the highest standards of product safety. Over the years, the LiftMaster® brand has led the industry in introducing innovative product safety features. As a company, we have manufactured garage door openers for 50 years with a safety record that ranks as one of the best in the industry.In the early 1990s, the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) enacted into law new rules ensuring that all garage door openers manufactured after 1992 had external entrapment protection devices, such as infrared sensors or sensing edges, in addition to the internal contact reverse mechanism. Garage door openers made prior to 1993 are safe and reliable if installed, tested, and maintained properly. However, the vast majority of these older units are not equipped with infrared sensors or other external entrapment protection devices, and thus do not meet today’s standards for garage door opener safety. To insure the highest degree of safety and customer satisfaction, we believe it is important that pre-1993 garage door openers are replaced, as opposed to being repaired.
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Ah, this takes me back. Indeed, I’m old enough to remember when garage door openers first hit the market, some time in the early to mid-70’s. We moved to a new house in ’74. I do not believe that the house from which we moved had an opener. The new one certainly did at some point, but I don’t recall whether it was part of the original equipment.
And we certainly didn’t have infrared sensors, sensing edges or contact reverse mechanisms. Instead, we developed the custom of the last kid out hitting the button by the workroom door and then running for it. You could make it comfortably at about a half-height crouch. A drop and roll would have been more dramatic, but with that concrete floor it would also have been more painful.
I believe we also went through a phase of experimental crushing of various objects (and no, this did not include my little sister, as much as I was sometimes tempted).
Good times. Good times.
Of course, things have changed, and were I to let the gels do half the things that I did as a matter of routine in my own misspent yoot, CPS would swoop in and cart them off quicker than one could say “knife”. I am not necessarily convinced that such change has been for the better.
The Port Stands At Your Elbow 
5 comments
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December 20, 2011 at 8:00 pm
The Maximum Leader
Ah, how funny the word works. I replaced my garage door opener about 5 years ago. The old one was probably a 1980s model. At the time I wondered if I should be concerned about the garage door as well. I let it go. Well… In the past week I’ve now shelled out $100 to make repairs to broken springs and pulleys. I had to have a professional come out because none of the “kits” at the store seemed to contain what I needed to make the repairs myself.
I’ve now been put on notice by the professionals that the tracks on which the door rolls are coming loose and are worn down in places. The movement and wear will likely cause the door to come off the rollers at times. And the door itself is suffering from metal fatigue at various joints. He gave the door until spring before the whole buisness needs to be replaced.
He did say they could re-use the opener…
December 20, 2011 at 10:24 pm
Diane
It rather seems your place is bent on causing you grief, no matter what.
Our first garage door with an opener (prior to this we had two sets of double doors – the kind a kid had to get out and open, then get out and close) was a heavy, monstrous wooden thing you could barely get raised if the opener broke down. It gave the “hit the button and run” a real edge.
December 20, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Robbo
Heh. Character-building, no doubt.
December 21, 2011 at 2:23 pm
mothe
I do not recall whether there was an opener on the ‘old house’ garage door–or on the doors of garages of previous houses in which we lived in Texas–because of course, we never drove the cars into any of them. Cars and boats parked on the driveway were essential emblems of respectability, and when it did happen to rain, we were glad of the free car-wash. Meantime the garages were repositories for twisted metal hulks of trikes and other juvenile sport vehicles, suburban agricultural implements, and much of that household detritus that northern folk stored in their basements. Texans rarely had basements, as it would have meant carving them out of the living rock, like the Treasury at Petra. There was an even simpler system at the little house in upstate New York in which we were living at the time of your nativity. The garage had no door. Character-building for your papa on January mornings.
December 21, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Sister
First of all, har-de-har-har. The “new” house was outfitted with the garage door when we moved in. And, as Mothe said, we never parked the cars in there – at least not the every day cars. And FYI, we still do the press and run routine here, but now we have to jump over the sensors while simultaneously crouching down so as not to bang one’s head on the descending door. This is most amusing when all 6’2″ of my husband is doing it. And lastly, it sounds like you will have an entirely new house on your hands, piece by piece, at this rate. Welcome to the wonderful world of home ownership!