Wonders of technology

The door opener in my garage was installed back when the garage was first built, which was in the late 70s or early 80s I think. Sometime around 2000, the remote crapped out, meaning the door could only be operated by using the indoor keypad. That meant that after I pulled out of the garage, I needed to get out of the car to close the door and when I pulled into the driveway, I needed to get out of the car to open the door. Not a big deal on nice days, but a pain when it rained or snowed.

I tried finding replacement remotes online, but the opener was so old that none were available. I couldn’t even find a manual. I looked into aftermarket remotes, but I read complaints about crummy range of operation. They also looked like a pain to program, and I would have wound up paying half the cost of a new opener for a decent model.

I had decided to bite the bullet and have some carpentry repair work done on the garage, so it made sense to upgrade the opener as well. This evening, the installer installed, and I now have remotes that work and lights that come on when the door opens and a safety sensor.

Dragging this house into the 21st…okay, the 20th century, one handyman at a time.

5 thoughts on “Wonders of technology”

  1. Awesome. I have a garage, but it is only used for storage for stuff I don’t really care about. It wasn’t built well at all, so I don’t trust my car in it. The door is a manual one and the last time I opened it…was the last time I can ever open it without it falling off.

    Eventually will have enough money saved to knock it down. Will likely move the garage over close to the house at that time and use the remaining concrete pad for a patio instead.

  2. I’m rebuilding this garage in stages. A few years ago, I had a new roof put on. Two years ago, eaves and soffits. This year, the lower portion of the frame will be replaced, all the way around. Some painting. A new side door.

    The concrete pad is cracked in many places. I think the cracks can be filled, but I should have a pro look at it. I’ll probably find out that I would have been better off to knock it down and start over from the pad up, but it’s too late for that now.

  3. There are enormous colonies of ants living in my eaves. If I let the gutter-cleaning go to long, they migrate in there too. Makes it a bit more exciting when you’re scooping along on top of the ladder. You never know what the next handful will bring.

  4. Ugh–they’re not carpenter ants, are they? I had a problem with those a couple of years ago. Cathedral ceiling in living room/poor air circulation/precip collecting along the peak in summer when the A/C ran. The ants burrowed in from the outside and made their home in the moldy insulation. I was sitting on the couch one Sunday afternoon when ants started falling on my head–looked up to find them walking along the ceiling beam toward the kitchen.

    Exterminator took care of the ants. Ceiling fan has so far taken care of the precip.

    House maintenance. It never ends.

  5. No thank goodness. They’re odiferous house ants. They have colonies in my garage, yard, and the foundation of my house. I constantly have to have bait out in the house because once it kills one colony, another one just moves right on in. With the pets, there is just no way that I can eliminate their food source since it may be as little as a stray bit of kibble that the cats knocked under the fridge.

    Yup yup on the house maintenance.

Comments are closed.