How Does Summer Weather Affect Your Garage Door?
Summer weather is often marked with high temperatures, direct sunlight and fierce thunder and lightning storms that can affect the appearance and functionality of your home’s garage door and garage door opener. To keep your door in top-notch condition and ensure reliable operation during the summer, it’s best to understand what types of summer weather can affect your door and learn some simple tips to keep your garage door system in good shape.
How the Sun Can Affect Garage Door Sensors
Garage door opener photo safety sensors are a safety feature of your system designed to stop the door from closing on an object in the garage door’s path. While this feature is great for ensuring safe daily garage door operations, direct sunlight can actually confuse the sensors into thinking there’s something blocking the door. During the summer, if your garage door opener closes intermittently, sunlight may be interfering with the photo eye sensors.
To prevent this malfunction, some manufacturers produce shades for the sensors or the other solution is to “flip” the sensors – one is a sender and one is a receiver – swapping the sender sensor and receiver sensor from side to side will also help to eliminate interference from the sun. As always, the trusted professionals at Hunter Door are available to provide advice or can help with inspecting the problem and finding a dependable and affordable solution.
High Humidity Levels Create Sticky Operations
Summer temperatures are often accompanied by uncomfortable and sticky humidity levels. High humidity can make your garage door stick to its perimeter seal especially if the door is painted and even more so if the door has been recently painted. The best solution to a sticking door is to make sure there is no paint on the back side of the perimeter seal – if you find there is paint on the back of the perimeter seal – take careful efforts to remove the excess paint without damaging the soft, pliable flap of the perimeter seal. In certain cases, the perimeter seal may need to be replaced – if you think that is the case, call Hunter Door for some friendly advice on replacing the perimeter seal – available in a variety of colors and sizes. And if it’s not a project you are willing to tackle – we can quickly schedule a service call and have your garage door back to working normally.
Thunderstorms and Unexpected Power Outages
During the summer months, you can often expect surprise thunderstorms that are often marked with power outages. While the materials of the door should protect against the excess moisture and heavy winds, homeowners should know how to safely open their garage door when the power goes out.
If power outages are frequent in your area, then you may consider purchasing a battery backup system for your garage door opener so the door can still safely operate during power outages. Without battery backup, homeowners should know how to manually open and close the garage door by removing the door from the automatic opener using the red emergency cord.
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Keep Your Garage Door Operating Properly With Hunter Door
When you want to maintain the quality and functionality of your garage door, trust the professionals at Hunter Door with performing regular garage door maintenance — or let us help you select and install a new beautiful and durable Clopay garage door crafted to withstand extreme climates for many years. The experts at Hunter Door have over 40 years of garage door and garage opener installation, repair and maintenance experience, and we pride ourselves on offering the highest-quality products and services with a superior customer experience.
Learn more about our garage door services today by calling us at 856-431-3952 or complete our online form to request services. We also offer free project quotes for all of our customers — just fill out our online estimate form!