Newest Enemy: the Garage Door
October 30th, 2008It Will Pay
Man, do I have stuff to do today. I have to spray things with copper to kill fungus. I have to make some effort to get started on the soffit. And I have to kill an electric eye on a garage door.
I have had lots of problems with this electric eye. Its purpose is to detect objects in the path of the door and stop the door so it won’t close on them. That’s its ostensible purpose. Its actual purpose is to protect the garage-door-opener company from lawyers.
You would have to be brain-damaged to let yourself be injured by a garage door. And the door has a second sensor which stops it when it hits stuff, so the electric eye is superfluous even for the brain-damaged. Obviously, somebody has sued over this, because there is no other explanation for all this safety junk.
I am wondering if I can fool the electric eye by putting foil over it, so the foil reflects the light back into the sensor. If the door crushes me and I die, I will take full responsibility.
I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me to disable it sooner. Maybe I’m brain-damaged, and I need the sensor to save me.
I put arsenic on some of my St. Augustine grass yesterday. Still waiting to see if it dies. I sure hope it does. I love that fluffy, bug-free, weed-free Bermuda grass.
Over the last two days, I have gotten so much done, it’s hard to believe. Yesterday I filled the trash heap with an enormous pile of hibiscus and other limbs. I gave a new hedge its first trim. I’ve been moving my old tomato pots off the patio and dumping the dirt in areas that need it.
I feel full of hope these days. Am I the only Republican who can say that at this time? I’m sure I’m not, although I doubt there are many non-Christian Republicans who feel this way.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:07 AM
My step dad just took the 2 sensors and mounted then face-to-face in the rafters, much easier to line them up that way.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:30 AM
Oooh, my electric eye for the garage door is full of demons. I can’t figure out how to bypass it for the life of me. I even took one side and tried to mount it right next to the other so the beam would never get interrupted but they must have some way of knowing how close they are to each other because it wouldn’t work. Evil thing, goes through fits every few months were it refuses to work.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:40 AM
I am working on the joy-in-my-heart thing. I am sure that God’s will, will be done. I had a nice converstaion with my son in Colorado, he and his wife lean a bit to the left, they went to see Obama speak and will vote for him. I told my son that I hope that if Obama wins, the he, Obama, will be as good as my son thinks he is and not as bad as I preceive him to be. I also pray that who ever wins, wins by a decent margine so we can all accept new leadership and get on with our lives.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:40 AM
I’d check the levels on the wires out of the eyes when the beam is interrupted and uninterrupted and then wire them up so that the uninterrupted level was always set.
October 30th, 2008 at 11:15 AM
Riprip has the problem solved. Hard to bypass, unless you get into the door circuitry. But you can just use duct tape to tape the emitter to the receiver and wire tie them to the rafters.
October 30th, 2008 at 4:06 PM
Bah. Unless you have some weird high-dollar system, garage door openers work pretty much the same way: a contact closure starts and stops it. And you’re right: the electric wire is only a “safety measure” if you consider juju to ward off lawyers “safety”.
Just take the wires off the screws, remembering which wire is which. If the door still works (99.9% chance) insulate them from one another, tuck them back out of the way, and forget the whole mess.
If the door doesn’t work, put the wires back where they were and post a photo of the sensor where the wires connect. It can’t be that hard.
Regards,
Ric
October 30th, 2008 at 10:46 PM
I had an old wooden door with an old Stanley closer. No Photoeye. Supposed to sense contact via a clutchswitch in the drive. Finally bought a new metal door. Used the old closer (had a bunch of remotes for tall the kids and cars and I’m frugal, yeah, frugal…. that’s the ticket!). Closed the door on some carpet that fell under the door. Crunch. Bought another new door, and a new accellerator opener, with Photoeye. No touch sensor. But contact closure switches won’t actuate. Some kind of coding in the signal from the wired switch. Glad to have the photoeye.