LESLIE: Alright, we’ve got José from Kansas City, Missouri on the line who’s got a garage door situation. What’s happening?
JOSÉ: Well, every winter, typically when it’s 10 below, the garage door decides that it doesn’t want to work and this is the outside panel on the garage door and the remote openers decide that they’re not going to work. I guess they want us to get out and freeze. (Leslie chuckles) One more piece of the equation is when we do get out and walk in the house and push the panel button on the inside of the house it does open.
TOM: José, let me throw a dart here. It sounds to me like what might be happening is as the door tries to come up it’s getting stuck because when the temperature drops like that the lubricants dry out; you can get some moisture in the hinges and it seizes and it might be that the safety reverse mechanism on this opener is basically thinking that something is stuck and so it’s shutting itself off. So you probably could replace the remote as well as well as the panel on the outside [to keep out] (ph) on the inside but for the cost of doing that, if this garage door opener, you suspect, is more than say three or four years old, you’d be better off replacing the whole opener. Because obviously part of the control circuit is breaking down and the cost of those repair parts is going to be close to the cost of replacing the whole thing. Unfortunately it’s a bit of a disposable society and this is a situation where just buying a replacement opener and keypad is probably not going to do it.
LESLIE: Mm-hmm. But you know what? Also, if you’re in a situation where you need to adjust the sensitivity of the mechanism that senses if something is blocking the door, you don’t want to forget to put it back when the weather warms up or mess something up where it’s going to sense something in a situation where it should.
JOSÉ: There goes the cat.
LESLIE: Exactly.
TOM: Exactly. (laughing) José, thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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