Garage Door Safety Tips for Families, Children and Pets

Garage door safety in a house with children and pets rests on three habits: run the auto-reverse and photo eye tests once a month, keep every way of moving the door out of small hands, and treat the springs and lift cables as off limits to everyone except a trained garage door technician. The door is usually the largest moving object in a home, and a properly adjusted opener is designed to stop and back off before it can trap anyone. The checks below tell you whether yours still does.

Where the real risks are

Garage door accidents tend to follow a few patterns: a child or animal dashing under a closing door, fingers caught between sections as they roll over the track curve, a spring or cable giving out, and an opener set to push too hard. Each has a simple check or a clear house rule.

The monthly auto-reverse test

Opener manuals ask owners to test the reversing system every month and again after any adjustment. All it takes is a short piece of 2x4 lumber and a clear doorway.

1. Move people, pets, bikes and anything stored near the tracks well away from the door.
2. Lay the 2x4 flat on the floor in the middle of the opening, so it stands about one and a half inches high.
3. Close the door with the wall button and watch. When the bottom edge touches the board, the door should stop and travel back up.
4. If the door stays down on the board, stops without reversing, or reverses only after a long pause, raise it, take the board out and stop using remote closing until the problem is solved. Read the force and travel section of your opener manual.
5. Repeat the test after any adjustment. A door that still fails needs service before it runs around children again.

A failed test is often a door problem rather than an opener problem. A door that drags or is out of balance makes the opener push harder, and turning the force setting up only hides the drag. Do the balance check further down at the same visit.

Then check the photo eyes

The two small sensors near the bottom of each door track send an invisible beam across the opening. The federal standard for openers made for sale in the US after 1992 (16 CFR part 1211, built on UL 325) requires a safeguard like this on top of the reversing system, and opener makers call for mounting the sensors no higher than 6 inches above the floor. To test them, start closing the door and pass a cardboard box or a broom handle through the beam. The door should stop and reverse, and many openers flash their light to show the beam was broken. Never use a person or a pet as the test object.

If the door ignores the box, check that both sensor lights glow steadily, wipe the lenses and look for a bracket knocked out of line. The garage door won't close guide works through sensor faults step by step. An opener with no photo eyes at all is due for replacement.

House rules for children

• Car remotes live on the visor or in a bag, never in a toy box. Many wall consoles have a lock button that shuts off every remote.
• The wall button goes where a small child cannot reach it. Opener instructions typically call for at least 5 feet above the floor, with the door in plain view.
• Treat the keypad code like a house key, and change it once a sitter no longer needs it.
• No racing a closing door. Children invent that game on their own, so set the rule early.
• No hanging on the door or putting hands into the section joints or the track. Many newer doors have pinch-resistant joints; older doors usually do not.
• Teach older children that on most openers, a press of the wall button while the door moves stops it or sends it back up.

Pets in and around the garage

Photo eyes watch one thin line a few inches above the floor. A cat lying just inside the door line, a small dog that darts through after the beam has cleared, or a pet curled up on the threshold can depend on the auto-reverse alone. In a house with animals the monthly test matters more, not less.

• Close the door only when you can see the whole opening. Think twice about timer-to-close settings and app closing, which move the door while nobody is watching.
• Keep pet beds, bowls and litter boxes away from the door line and the tracks.
• In East County and North County Inland, a closed garage can run far hotter than the house in summer, so a pet should not be shut in there on a warm day.

Springs and cables: look, never touch

The torsion spring on the shaft above the door, or the extension springs along the side tracks on older doors, hold enough energy to lift the full weight of the door. The steel lift cables at each bottom corner carry that same load. These parts cause the most serious garage door injuries, and none of them is a homeowner adjustment, whatever an online video suggests. What you can do safely is look. Once a month, with the door closed, check for:

• A gap between the coils of a torsion spring, which means the spring has broken.
• Frayed or rusty strands on either cable, especially just above the bottom bracket.
• A cable that hangs slack on one side, or a door that sits crooked in the opening.
• An extension spring with no safety cable running through its center.

A balance check is safe when done with care. With the door fully closed, pull the emergency release, lift the door by hand to about waist height and ease your grip while keeping your hands on it. A balanced door stays roughly where you leave it. If it sinks or climbs, the springs no longer suit the door. If it feels very heavy from the start, lower it and stop: a spring has probably broken.

The emergency release: when to pull it

The red handle on the opener rail disconnects the door so it can be moved by hand during a power cut. Pull it only with the door closed: if the door is open and a spring or cable has failed, the release hands its full weight to gravity. Show every adult and teenager where the handle is, and make sure younger children know it is not a swing.

Power cuts and the California battery backup rule

A family needs a way out of the garage when the power fails, and California wrote that into law. Starting July 1, 2019, Health and Safety Code section 19892, added by SB 969 (Chapter 621, Statutes of 2018), requires a battery backup on any home opener that is made for sale, sold, offered or installed here. It also prohibits hooking a new replacement door up to an older opener without one. Section 19891 sets the civil penalty at $1,000 per opener. The California battery backup law post explains what that means for an older opener.

Backup batteries wear out quietly. Once or twice a year, unplug the opener and run the door on battery power to confirm it still opens and closes, then plug it back in.

When to call a pro

Call a professional when the door fails the auto-reverse test after you have followed the manual, when the photo eyes are missing or keep faulting, when you spot a gap in a spring or a frayed cable, or when the balance check shows the door sinking or climbing. Those are spring and opener problems, and the garage door spring repair page explains what that work involves. Doorup is open 24 hours, 7 days a week on (619) 666-6054 and works under CA Contractor License #1156970 (C-61/D-28). Until the door is checked, keep it closed, unplug the opener and keep children and pets out of the garage.

Garage door safety questions