Monday 12 April 2010

A stuck garage door opener

Last week, Debbie and I had some trouble with our garage door opener. The entire thing ground to a very final halt while fully open and refused to budge again. We tried the emergency release in vain and couldn't get anyone out to repair it for four days. It's all fixed up now, though.

What concerned me most about the whole issue was this: how do you design a garage door opener with an emergency release mechanism that is so dependent on the motor that they both fail at once? It seems to me that if it's designed properly, the emergency release should be more likely to work when the motor fails.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It seems that Friday was when I posted my 2000th post to this blog!
PPS - I meant to make a big deal of it when that happened...

9 comments:

Erin Marie said...

Happy 2000th Birthday!

John said...

I don't think it's a "birthday" as such, but it's definitely a milestone. I wonder how many words I've written here over the years.

Erin Marie said...

I dunno. You're pretty old.

John said...

But if I was 2000 years old, you would also be old enough to have met Jesus when he was physically on Earth.

Erin Marie said...

I have a theory that you actually are Jesus.

John said...

Interesting concept...

Erin Marie said...

Dance it for me.

A.T. said...

Your fear of everything failing at once is hilarious. Technophobia?

John said...

The thing is, it's more than a fear. It did happen. And it offended me on a design level, where it seemed the emergency release should be independent of the motor, especially when motor failure would be the primary reason you'd want to use the emergency release.