Garage door opener tip for those building

11 years ago

We didn't choose our garage door openers - they were just installed. I don't know how much they cost without looking back at the pile of invoices. However, they have a WONDERFUL feature that I didn't even know existed - motion detection. You can turn it on or off on the opener on the wall, but if it is turned on you step in the garage and the lights on the opener turn on. Much easier than remembering to turn on the switch before you go out there. Each one has one so the one in the area of the garage you are in is the one that turns on - we have a 3 car garage and one or two of them turn on at most.

Just FYI for those building - this is one of those things I would have never thought of but I love (and was reminded of it as I went into the dark garage to get my purse out of my car!)

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Comments (9)

lexmomof3
11 years ago
Thanks for the tip! Hope I remember this when we get to that point.
athensmomof3
Original Author
11 years ago
Ours are made by Liftmaster (just went and looked) - but I am sure others offer this feature. It is a great one!
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Xclusive
11 years ago
Great feature, ours does that as well. We installed our own garage door openers after we moved in and used Chamberlain 3/4 hp belt drive (If I recall same company, Liftmaser is dealer only side and Chamberlain is for the consumer side). After having a chain garage for so long and just assuming they were all loud, we were pleasantly suprised that we cant even hear the belt drive garage door in the house when its going up/down. After looking at reviews we were just looking for something that was quiet and reliabe. This just happened to have all the bells and whistle(battery back and it even has a fancy time/temp on the display controller in the garage which we werent even looking for) :)
chispa
11 years ago
We have the motion feature, plus the feature called Timer To Close(TTC). The garage door will automatically close after a preset number of minutes. How many times have you driven back home because you couldn't remember if you closed the garage? If you have TTC programed, you know the door will close after x minutes. Make sure you have a keyless entry keypad outside the garage so you don't accidentally lock yourself out. Our model also has battery back-up, so it will still work during power failures. Model is Liftmaster 8550.
athensmomof3
Original Author
11 years ago
Gosh, wish we knew about the timer to close feature! My husband is very guilty of this:)
chispa
11 years ago
Our garage door guy had spec'd a mid level model. It only cost $25 more per opener to get the top of the line model with all the features. You really can't leave any decisions to your builder!
athensmomof3
Original Author
11 years ago
It may be that you can switch out the opener part where you set the time to close - we only would use the time to close on one door, not all 3. He has gotten much better about it so not as much of an issue any more but it still would have been nice to have!
maniqra
11 years ago
That,s a good feature your door has but sometimes the garage door opener that has motion feature stops working. Then we have to fix it or call some professional to make it work. Sometimes the garage door wonÃ¢ÂÂt close all the way, chances are you need to have your limit switch adjusted. If the switch doesnÃ¢ÂÂt need adjusting, check to see if your garage door is binding while being opened and closed manually and sometimes after doing all this fixing the gate still don,t work properly.
Here is a link that might be useful: Garage Door Opener Tips
amtrucker22
11 years ago
Nice thread :) I know this doesn't apply to most but figured I would post it up just in case it would help someone.

My garage has about 18ft ceilings and one day I hope to have a lift that I can put into the garage. With that in mind I bought a garage door opener that actually mounts to front wall and connects to the shaft that the spring is on for your garage door. This allows you to not have the opener in the middle of the garage and frees up a lot of the space up there. I had the electrician run electricity and the sensor wires to the front wall so I could hook everything up.

The opener is a liftmaster 3800 and it does have the motion detector on it also :)