If you have kids, you know they can get into anything, and if you have a garage door, you should know that it’s no exception. A massive machine controlled with the touch of a button – is there anything more attractive to an inquisitive toddler?
Luckily, Door Power, your Norwood garage door repair and garage door installation specialists, is here to help with some advice below on how to maintain a respectful relationship between child and garage door.
Consider How Your Garage Door Is Installed
It’s the number one thing you can do to keep your small children – and you – safe. You can’t personally monitor the area 24/7, but you can create such a space that keeps your kids from going ham with things that are most certainly not toys.
Install Your Garage Door Wall Control in a Safe Location
Of course, you still want adults and older children to be able to reach it, but it should be far away from any small and curious fingers. Most garage door wall controls aren’t installed at knee-height, but toddlers are resourceful and can stack things to get to it with enough persistence.
If your garage is filled with objects that might make a good impromptu ladder, perhaps it’s time to relocate them. At best, your child could end up causing garage door opener malfunction with their excessive button mashing. At worst, they could tumble backward and hit their head.
A Fingerprint Garage Door Entry Pad Can Prove Useful
Your garage door’s entry pad is a little different than its wall control. It is the small control panel that looks somewhat like a landline phone cradle mounted on the outside of your garage door. It’s used to open and shut the device – provided the operator can input the proper number pattern.
As anyone with both a smartphone and a small child can attest to, kids are better at memorizing passcodes than you might think. If your youngster has learned to access the garage door with an input code once, nothing is stopping them from learning a new one when you change it.
Consider a more modern garage door keypad in this case: one that operates off of your fingerprint. We at Door Power are happy to help with installation of this life-saving, head-ache reducing tool.
Does Your Garage Door Have an Automatic Lock?
If you really can’t trust your child, an automatically-locking garage door might be in the cards for you. By connecting such a mechanism to your garage door opener, these modern marvels lock down your garage door without you even having to think about it. Just remember to keep all the regular doors to your garage locked, and you have a childproof garage both inside and out.
Door Power’s state-of-the-art garage door openers often include auto-lock technology!
Make Maintenance a Number-One Priority
With so much talk about stopping kids from using your garage door improperly, it’s sometimes easy to forget that your garage door, too, needs to perform properly to keep your kids safe. A garage door cable problem, for example, can cause the machine to come crashing down, thus injuring your children.
We know, we know, your life with kids is busy, but you can’t afford to compromise on safety. Luckily, you don’t need to with Door Power’s fast, often-same-day help. We’re here to help keep your kids safe by providing quick and honest maintenance for:
● Garage door springs
● Garage door tracks
● Garage door cables
● And more!
Whether your kids are well-behaved around your garage door or not, you have a responsibility to ensure their wellbeing. Take care of your garage door to prevent any potentially tragic malfunctions.
Check out our blog post Routine Garage Door Maintenance: Four Things you Should Be Doing if you need a place to get started!
Set Healthy Garage Door Boundaries
Just as you teach your children not to run out into the street, so should you teach them to behave respectfully around garage doors. “I’ve been trying,” you might say, but have you actually shown them how garage doors can be dangerous when misused? Often, even showing your children images of broken garage doors can be enough to convince them that what you’re saying is serious, not just another rule they don’t understand.
Children also respond to information, just like the rest of us. Consider checking out our blog posts, such as Three Common Garage Door Problems and Their Fixes and fascinate your young child with info about garage doors. They’ll gain a healthy respect for such a large machine after understanding a little more about it.
Contact Door Power & Childproof Your Garage Door Today
Children or no children, carriage house garage door or overhead, we’re your one-stop-shop for all your garage door repair and garage door installation needs. Give our Norwood office a call today at 952-467-3199 for service.