If you’ve read the latest articles on this blog, you would have noticed that we are focusing on garage door openers, as we’ve been receiving a lot of requests from people who are into the DIY garage installations!
Installing garages and garage doors are quite the in-thing today, and many people prefer to do that. While that is fine with normal garage doors and openers, for the more advanced ones you will anyway need to call in the experts.
We wrote an article on installing a garage door opener a couple of days ago, but did not mention the wiring part of it in detail. So we got a request from a home owner asking if we could elucidate on that. So this one is for you, Henry. (and for all those home owners who are installing their own garage door openers too)
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First open and close the garage door manually to see if everything is working fine. If there is some wrong positioning during the installation of the garage door opener, it will obstruct the door from opening and closing smoothly. Once you notice that it is moving fine, we can move on.
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Look for the linkage assembly – the one which consists of the straight bar link, the L shaped link, and the door bracket – and attach the assembly to the traveler.
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Pull the disconnect cord to break away the door from the opener.
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See that the door bracket is centered on the door; and remove the original lock from the door.
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Mount the push button control on the garage wall at a convenient height for everyone in the family, and run the wire up along the wall and into the ceiling. Connect it to the power unit on the roof and use electrical staples so that the wire does not move; but see that you don’t staple through the wires!
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Refer to the manual of the garage door opener and see if you have the right kind of wiring done on this. Each garage door opener will have a different kind of wiring and hence you will need to go through that so you don’t make a mistake.
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Turn off power in the breaker box and install an electrical outlet near the ceiling of the garage door so you don’t need to run wires all around. For the electrical outlet, you can call your local electrician and he’ll do it in a few minutes. Make sure that the outlet is grounded properly.
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Connect the door with the opener once more, and adjust the safety reverse system with the height you want it to reverse from. For this too, you can refer to your user manual.
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See whether the garage door opener has a provision for an electric eye – which is mandatory by federal law today. If yes, install it at a height suitable so that kids, pets, and other obstructions don’t get stuck in a closing garage door.
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Operate the garage door using the door opener switch you installed on the wall, and you should see the door rising and closing smoothly. Else tweak it around a bit till you are happy with the movement.
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If you have a wireless controller unit also, in the earlier step of connecting the wire to the overhead unit, also connect the radio receiver to it, and plug it into the circuit grid. The rest of the connections can be done as usual. With that, your garage door should also be operable with the radio receiver. Check for the right frequency and the distance it is catching from. Here is an article we wrote earlier about programming your garage door opener remote.
Like we said earlier, there is an increasing percentage of do-it-yourself kind of home owners, and they all prefer to work around their homes on weekends. If you are not the kind, you can just call in a local garage door expert, and he will finish the wiring in an hour or so. If you buy a garage door opener that comes with a DIY kit, it will have the necessary wirings and other paraphernalia you will require to wire it properly, and will also come with a diagrammatic manual which you can just follow.
What we will do next is to bring to you a series of simple diagrams for wiring your garage door. That should be up in a day or two. Stay tuned.
