Tips to Keep Kids Safe Around Your Garage Doors

Your garage doors are a great convenience when it comes to your home’s entryways. But as the largest moving piece of your house, they also pose the biggest risk to safety – especially to children. This is why you need to make garage door safety a priority. There are several ways to ensure that your doors are meeting safety standards, as well as a few ways to practice caution when interacting with overhead doors.

Carefully Store the Remote
One fact about children is this: they love pushing buttons! While you can warn children not to touch the garage door remote, it is likely that they will not be able to resist opening or closing the garage door when unsupervised. To counteract this, you are better off keeping the garage door remote somewhere safe and out of reach for young hands.

Make Sure the Photo Sensors are Working
A key safety function for your garage doors takes the shape of the photo sensors. These devices are located a few inches off the ground and are responsible for detecting when something is obstructing the path of your closing garage doors. These devices do not work when they aren’t aligned properly, so make sure they are pointed at each other first. Next, test that they are functioning by closing your garage doors and waving something like a broom between the sensors. Your garage doors should stop closing as soon as the sensors are blocked. Call a professional if your garage doors fail the sensor test.

Explain That Garage Doors Are Not Toys
A great way to promote garage door safety with your kids is through clear communication. Have a family meeting in the garage, where you clearly explain to them how garage doors are not a part of any games and should not be treated like toys. Make it clear that they should never “ride” the garage door when they are opening, they should never race under the doors when they are closing, and they should never touch the doors when they move.

Stay On Top of Garage Door Maintenance
The best way to ensure garage door safety is by making sure your system is running optimally. From the parts to the opener, it is easy to have peace of mind when you know your garage door products are working as they should be. Consider calling a garage door professional for a tune-up and inspection. It’s recommended that you do this at least once a year, if not twice. These inspections can actually end up saving you money, as an expert can spot small problems before they graduate into large (and more expensive) problems.

Are you ready to stay on top of your garage doors’ safety? Give the experts at A1 Door Company a call today for tips – or to schedule an inspection. As the top garage door service in Richmond, VA, we’ve worked with just about every make and model of garage doors. Allow our team to take a look at your system and explain how to keep it safe for the whole family!