Five Garage Door Safety Checks Every Family Should Do
Your garage door is the heaviest moving thing in the house. Five checks, ten minutes, once a month — including the two that actually protect children.
A double garage door weighs somewhere between 90 and 150 kilograms and moves through the space children walk through every day. It is the heaviest moving object in a normal house, and unlike a car it has no annual inspection.
These five checks take ten minutes. Do them monthly, and do them today if you have never done them.
1. The auto-reverse test
Every automatic opener made since the early 1990s must reverse when it meets an obstruction. Whether yours still does is another matter — the force setting drifts, and a door that has been run on tired springs often has had its force turned up by a previous owner to compensate.
How to test it: lay a length of timber flat on the floor in the middle of the doorway, or a roll of paper towel on its side. Close the door with the remote. When it touches the obstruction, it must stop and reverse within about two seconds.
If it does not: do not use the door until it is fixed, and do not simply turn the force setting down until it passes — a force setting that is too low leaves you with a door that reverses on nothing. It needs setting correctly against a properly balanced door.
Use a solid object, never a person’s hand or foot, and never a pet.
2. The photo-eye test
The two sensors mounted about 15 centimetres off the floor either side of the door are what stop it closing on a child who runs underneath.
How to test it: start the door closing, then pass a broom handle through the beam. The door must reverse immediately — not slow down, not continue and reverse on contact.
Also check: both sensor LEDs are steady, the lenses are clean, and the brackets are not bent or loose. Fifteen centimetres is deliberate. It is roughly the height of a crawling child.
3. The balance test
This is the check that predicts the failures.
How to test it: close the door. Pull the emergency release cord. Lift the door by hand to about waist height and let go.
A balanced door stays put. If it slams down, the springs have lost tension and gravity is winning. If it flies up, they are over-tensioned.
Why it matters for safety: a door that drops when released is a door that will drop hard if the opener disconnects, if a cable snaps, or if someone pulls the release cord while it is open. It is also destroying the opener’s drive gear every single cycle.
Re-engage the opener by pulling the cord again and running a full cycle.
4. The emergency release
Everyone in the house who drives should know where the release cord is, what it does, and how to re-engage it. In a power cut, that cord is the only way the door opens.
Two things to check:
The cord should hang low enough for an adult to reach comfortably, and the handle should be intact and visible — traditionally red.
The cord must not be reachable from outside. On doors with gaps at the top, a coat hanger through the gap can hook a long release cord and open the garage. If yours dangles that low, shorten it.
Teach it properly: pull down and back on the cord to disengage. To re-engage, pull the cord toward the door and run the opener until it clicks back onto the trolley. Never pull the release while the door is open unless you have physically supported the door — an unbalanced door will drop.
5. Wall button placement and remote habits
The wall button must be at least 1.5 metres off the floor, out of a child’s reach, and mounted where whoever presses it can see the whole doorway. A button a five-year-old can reach is a hazard, not a convenience.
Remotes belong out of children’s hands. Clipped to the visor is fine; loose in a cup holder or a school bag is not. A garage door is not a toy, and the moving parts at the top of the door travel are genuinely dangerous.
Watch the door all the way down. The habit of pressing the button while reversing out and driving off is how doors close on bikes, bins and pets. Watch it until it is fully shut.
What to teach children
Three rules, in plain language.
- The door is not a toy. Never play near it, under it, or with the buttons.
- Never run under a moving door, even when it is going up.
- Keep hands away from the section joints and hinges. Fingers get caught between panels as the door bends around the curve — this is the most common garage door injury in children, and it happens in a fraction of a second.
Things worth fixing straight away
- Frayed or slack cables
- A visible gap in the spring
- A door that hangs crooked or judders
- Auto-reverse or photo eyes that fail their test
- Any grinding or banging that is new
All of these are tension or structural issues, and none of them are user-serviceable. Springs in particular are not a DIY job.
Book a safety inspection
An annual professional check covers everything above plus the parts you cannot assess from the ground: spring cycle life, bearing wear, cable condition, force settings and track alignment. It sits alongside the quarterly maintenance routine rather than replacing it.
Phone us. There is no call-out fee, so a safety inspection that finds nothing wrong costs you nothing at all — which is exactly how it should be.
Rather someone just fixed it?
We repair garage doors across Perth the same day you phone, with no call-out fee and a fixed price agreed before any work starts.