Things We Take For Granted - Garage Door Openers

We don't appreciate how convenient garage door openers are until they stop working. A couple of months ago I heard a gunshot-like sound after I ducked under my closing garage door tripping the sensors. With the door stopped dead in its tracks, I noticed a huge bicycle chain hanging down from the opener. The hell is that? 

Turned out when I tripped the sensors, the weight of the door ripped the sprocket on top of the opener off rendering the chain driven opener useless. Great. Another project but how hard could it be to replace a garage door opener? Little did I know the challenges I'd face over the next five or six weekends. In the meantime, having to get out of our cars to manually open our garage door got old very quickly.

If I was to fathom why the opener broke, it was probably because I hadn't wound the counterbalancing spring completely when I replaced it a couple of years ago. Not winding it all the way leaving too much load on the opener and it finally gave out when I tripped the sensors; imagine the force that herky-jerky motion does to even properly installed openers. That and the fact the opener, being original to the house, was twenty years old. 

Incidentally, winding garage door springs is not for the faint of heart. It's so dangerous that you can't buy these springs in any home center; you have to go to a place that specializes in garage doors that caters to contractors to get them. And they won't let us homeowners buy them if you don't sign a "death waiver" that absolves them from liability in the event you get injured or killed winding them.  Yes. Killed. That big spring lets go and one of those "winders" hits you, you could be in big trouble. Terrified me only wound the spring on our door enough for the opener to lift it; the door was impossible to lift by hand with the opener disengaged. Good thing we have a "third bay" which also has a busted opener but it's a much smaller door and the spring is wound properly making it easy to lift the door. 

So, after the opener broke, the first thing I did was wind the spring several more turns. Again, one of the more unnerving tasks I've done as a homeowner but I got the job done and the door was then quite easy to lift and pull down by hand.

Garage door openers vary greatly in price depending on the brand, features and how powerful the motor is and this Chamberlain chain drive unit, at $138, was the least expensive unit available at Lowe's or Home Depot; they're the exact same price at both stores.

While consumer reviews of the Chamberlain openers are excellent, I found the instructions cryptic. Clearly, they were for experienced installers and not for weekend hacks like me. To make matters worse, all the Chamberlain videos I found online were not exactly for the opener I bought - a full chain drive unit that I found impossible to sufficiently tighten the chain on. Furious, I returned the blasted thing fully assembled to Home Depot. Well, my wife did. I was too embarrassed. One weekend's work on the garage door project down the tubes.

The second opener I bought was this chain and cable drive Craftsman unit that was just over $100. To make it an even sweeter deal, Sears took $60 off the price if I reopened my Sears credit card. Such a deal. What's more, assembly was a breeze, I felt the Chamberlain a tad over-engineered, and I got the whole thing up, installed and opening and closing the door in under two hours. Score. Or so I thought. The problem was our Chamberlain app we had been using on our old opener couldn't link up to it. Our keypad didn't work either; the only thing that could open the door was the one remote that came with the opener and the hard-wired wall switch. A call to Chamberlain's customer support line, they had Saturday hours bless their hearts, and the nice lady on the line told me that the Craftsman I bought, despite instructions online to the contrary, was not compatible with their "MyQ" app. Same went for the keypad. You've got to be shitting me. Weekend two shot to hell; back to the drawing board.

Next up on the garage door opener hit parade was a Genie unit I got for $168. It was more expensive than the other two but it was a name I trusted and what's more, no chain drive - it was a belt drive which some reports I read said was the best. Ever the wiser, before I installed it, I bench tested the Chamberlain app on it and, wouldn't you know it, it didn't work on the Genie either. Another call to Chamberlain and they apologized saying that there are actually two models on the market that aren't compatible with their app - that Craftsman I bought and this Genie. Would've been nice if they told me that the first time I called them don't you think? Dumbfounded, I boxed up the Genie and returned it. Weekend three, gone.

I spent the next weekend doing research on openers and pondering whether or not I should just go with a belt drive Ryobi or Chamberlain "smart opener" with the app built in; my wife was insistent on being able to open the door with her phone. At $200 or more, they were pricey but at least I'd finally get this god damn time suck of a project finished. I chose instead, remarkably, to try another chain driven Chamberlain but this time I vowed to be as diligent as possible studying the assembly instructions. I figured that if this one turned out to be impossible to assemble I'd buy a "smart opener" from Sears. We had a coupon at Lowe's dropping the price 10% too. Not bad.

As with the Genie, I bench tested the app on our latest Chamberlain and...it didn't work. Believing the app was outdated, I called Chamberlain and they insisted it wasn't working because the opener wasn't fully assembled and installed. Didn't make sense to me but, ok. fine. Incredulous, I assembled the Chamberlain, which, incidentally, was a chain and cable design similar to the Craftsman, installed it and, voila, the app worked on it. Imagine that. Our keypad worked as well.

By the way, I replaced the screw drive Genie unit on our "third bay" that hadn't worked for years with that Craftsman unit I had bought. Now we have two fully functioning garage door openers and we'll never take their operating properly for granted. Well, at least for the time being. You know how that goes. On to the next project.