Review Blog - Reviews on everything

Previously I have talked about the different types of garage doors and their mechanics. Today I am going to talk about the control systems that are the brain boxes for these systems.

Up until a couple of years ago the garage door market had several different key companies supplying and installing garage doors. Control boxes were often unique to the individual companies. Some included battery backups and alarm systems as well as the standard remote controls.

Most of these systems relied on quite an old technology for the safety aspect of the doors. Infra red beams or photo cells. These little devices were generally sat about 1 ft up from the floor of the garage door, in the opening. They send an invisible infra red beam from one side of the garage door, to the other. If the beam is on anyway broken - i.e the car is in the opening of the garage or someone is standing under the door - the door will not close. If the garage door is closing and the beam is broken, perhaps a cat or child is walking into the garage, then the door will stop and reverse.

Some beams only used a single box on the one side of the door and reflector to reflect the beam back to the unit. In my opinion these were not as good as the sender and receiver style I was refferring to above.

In fact, if you have an old roller door that is stuck open then check you do not have an obstruction - even a spiders web or dust or dirt on the lense can prevent the garage door from closing as the garage door thinks something is in the way. Genreally a damp cloth will resolve this.

Now, I have been discussing this in past tense because a couple of years ago new regulations came into force. These rergulations meant that any roller garage door would now have to use a pressure sensing bottom rail strip on the final slat of the door. Whilst, in my opinion, this is totally unnecessary as the beams did a good enough job here - it is now the law. This created a huge problem for manufacturers as it meant that somehow the bottom slat of the door would have to be connected to the control box.

In teh past this has been achieved with a curly cable, mainly on industrial doors. Who would want these ugly cables in their garage? And what’s more they are problematic and are likely to get tangled and result in the garage door no longer being able to close - great for security!!!

Well it seems to me now there is one key manufacturer of a system that most garage door companies seem to be using. I am reluctant to mention their name on this blog but if you really wanted to find out then just google it. I have been trying to search for an alternative for some time but it would seem they are the only competition about - they really have cornered a market.

What makes their system different is that they use the safety edge bottom rail on their garage door systems. This has a transmitter on the bottom slat that communicates, wire free, with the garage door control unit. If you are buying a garage door in the UK then you will almost certainly have this type of system installed.

As great as it sounds - it still comes with issues of it’s own.

To be continued……………………..