Garage doors are one of the primary ways people into their homes. Depending on how you use your garage, it can also be a place where your children may want to play when they want to be outdoors, but also want shade from this Houston sun. That is why garage door safety concerning your children is important. A garage door can be as heavy as several hundred pounds with moving parts like the springs. These can pose a danger to a child. That is why it important to know how to keep your children safe.

Safety Features Of Your Garage Door.

In 1993 federal regulations were enacted that required that all automatic garage doors have built-in safety features designed to protect children and pets. This was because the Consumer Product Safety Commission recognized the danger that heavy garage doors posed for children and pets. There are two main safety features of a garage door, the garage door photosensors ( also known as Safety Eyes ) and a reverse mechanism.

Garage Door Photo Sensors

Garage door photosensors are 2 small little devices with lenses on the front that are positioned about 6 inches off the ground on either side of the garage door track.  They are constantly firing a tiny laser beam from one to the other. If anything blocks the beam from one sensor to the other, the garage door should not close all the way and should reverse back up. This is an easy thing to test, as just place an object in front of the sensor but not in the doorway and see if the garage door closes all the way down or not. If it does, see our Common Causes of Garage Door Sensor Problems or call a garage door repair professional

Reverse Mechanism

The garage door photosensors work in conjunction with the garage door reverse mechanism. If the garage door comes down and touches any object before hitting the ground, the garage door is supposed to reverse back up instead of going down. You can test this with a paper towel roll. Take a full roll of paper towels and place it under your garage door and then lower the door. The moment the door touches the paper towel roll it should quickly reverse and go back up without damaging the towels. If it does not reverse or reverses two slowly to prevent damage to the roll, you should call a garage door repair professional to diagnose the cause of the issue.

What You Can Do

You simply do not want to just depend on the garage door safety features to keep you children safe. You need to educate your child as well.

The Garage Door Itself

While there are safety features in place, it is not a good idea to just depend on them. Your child needs to understand that a garage door is a heavy object and not to stand directly in it’s path. A garage door can weigh 125 to 400 lbs and can crush a small child. They need to understand that practice not being directly under the garage door.

The Garage Door System

In order for the garage door to work, it is rigged with all kinds of parts that can cause damage if messed with. The garage door springs for example, are set with a certain amount of torque. Children should not be playing with them or around them, because if one breaks it could cause bodily harm or death. Another example is the photosensors. While playing on or with them with not hurt them directly, they can cause the system to fail, which means the door could close all the way down when it not suppose to and harm someone.  It is best to show them the parts and explain to them what each part does and how they could be harmed if that part is not respected and left alone.

Between what you do as a parent and the garage door safety features, your children should be safe from a garage door. If one of your safety features are not working properly and you’re in the Houston area, just call us a Spectrum Overhead Garage Door LLC. And we will come to inspect your garage door system with no trip charge.