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draasch_gw

Two Sears Garage Door openers on the fritz... and I'm locked out!

draasch
17 years ago

Greetings All !

We've been having a lot of goofy minor electrical problems for the past few days. We think it may be because an electrical storm (which really wasn't all that big or flashy) somehow zapped our lines.

Our 2-car detached garage has low-voltage wires running into the house, to a wall switch in the kitchen, so we may open and close the doors from there.

Well, the other night, we went to bed. We weren't in bed long before we saw some lightning and heard a distant rumble. I got up and took down my computer, but I noticed that my wife's side of the garage was wide-opened with the light on !!

I went downstairs to the kitchen and flipped the switch. No good! I went outside into the garage and pressed the interior switch for that door. Nothing! The opener itself seemed to be making a loud electronic humming sound. But at the time, I thought the sound might actually be the mercury lamp that's attached just outside of the garage: it hums like that all the time.

Well, I got up on a chair and unplugged the opener. AS I was unplugging it, this somehow triggered the door to go down. Thinking maybe this fixed it, I went and pressed the button: Nothing. So I plugged it back in. It went up. But still the button didn't work. Well, I couldn't very well leave that one side of the garage opened all night! So, I triggered it to close again by unplugging it. And this time, I left it unplugged. (The door on MY side of the garage was working fine, so far.)

So, I went back in the house, back to bed.

The next morning, still my wife's side of the garage won't work. Only now MY side of the garage won't open either !!! I listened at the door and I heard that same electronic hum that I had heard on the other one. So, I went back inside the house, went to the electrical box, and turned off the garage circuit for two hours. Still, after that, when I turned it back on, neither garage door opener responds in any way. Remotes are useless too.

So, effectively, we haven't been able to get into our garage for the past 24 hours! (It has no exterior human-sized door and I boarded up the windows 2 years ago, after we moved into the house and almost immediately had a garage break-in and theft.)

A guy at work told me this sort of thing happened to him as well few years back. But the problem went away after two days.

Well, so far, it hasn't !

And I'm going to really need to get inside my garage by sometime omorrow at the latest!!

Any thoughts / ideas ??

Thanks!

-= David Raasch =-

9725 E. Winner Rd.

www.myoldhouse.com

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