Garage Door and Gate Openers

Garage door openers and gate openers are no longer 'exclusive to the rich and famous'. At Garage Door & Gate Solutions around 80% of new garage doors that we supply are automated.

Today, when installed properly these appliances are economical, reliable and extremely convenient to operate. They can be fitted to new garage doors, and retrofitted to many old garage doors and driveway gates, and occasionally even pedestrian gates!

Although we refer to garage door openers below, operationally, gate openers are identical.

Garage door openers are devices which attach to your garage door, plug into a normal power point and with the power of an electric motor, open and close your garage door at the touch of a button.

In most cases, they are operated by pressing a securely coded keyring or palm-sized radio transmitter inside your car or home. By pressing the transmitter button for 1-2 seconds within a range of about 20 metres of the door, the opener reacts by opening the door if it's closed, closing the door if it's open, or stopping the door if it's in motion.

For safety, we recommend that you press the transmitter only when you have the door in sight, and watch it open or close until it completes its movement. When the opener stops, it will hold the door in that position until the transmitter is pressed again.

Openers adequately hold the door closed, so that once closed they normally require no additional locking.

All openers are able to be disengaged easily by the homeowner, so that the door can be opened and closed manually. This is essential if you need to drive in or out during a power failure or if the opener breaks down.

All openers stop if, while moving the door, they meet an obstruction or overload. This is to minimize damage to the door, the opener, the vehicle, and most importantly the person that may have been struck by the door.

High obstruction sensitivity can be difficult to achieve because the opener must drive with enough force to open and close the (often heavy) door reliably in all weather conditions, and yet have enough sensitivity to stop when meeting an obstruction. Manufacturers like B&D achieve this using sophisticated electronics. As installers, we enhance this by:

1. matching the correct opener to the door,
2. setting up the door so that it is correctly balanced and working smoothly before adding the opener,
3. installing the opener to maximize the 'mechanical advantage' or leverage that the opener applies, and
4. ensuring the obstruction sensitivity adjustments are correctly tuned to the operating effort required to open and close the door, and to the prevailing conditions.

All openers can be fitted with, and we recommend the installation of a Photo Electric Cell which does not require the opener to overload by striking an object. This clever device is installed close to the floor behind and/or in front of the door, and throws an invisible beam across the opening. If the beam is broken while the door is closing, the opener recognizes this as an emergency and stops the door immediately.