Gotcha!

East side; chain-tensioner pin visible. (Photo by Linda Hughes.)

Yesterday afternoon (Friday, April 2, 2010) I was taking a nap.
My wife strode in.
“I don't know what's with that garage-door,” she said; “but it closes about a foot, and then opens right back up again.”
I got up. It had made a gigantic noise that morning, but closed.
It's a power operated garage-door.
I tried it.
Closed about a foot, BANG; and then opened right back up again.
“It's hitting something,” I said.
Our automatic garage-door opener has two safety features engineered into it.
-1) is a light-beam across the bottom of the opening. If a kitty-cat or a small child breaks the beam, the closer reverses.
-2) if the door hits something that hadn't already broken the light-beam, like a car, it also reverses.
Something was triggering response number-two.
But what? What was it hitting? What was hanging it up?
Get out stepladder.
Release pull-chain thingy from garage-door.
Close door manually.
No problem. It's not hitting anything.
Actuate power opener/closer.
It completes its entire cycle without drama, but the door isn't attached.
Our garage-door is HUGE. Eight by 18 feet.
When our house was being built 20 years ago, the contractor suggested two garage doors, each eight feet square.
“No!” I shouted.
“I specified that door for two reasons:
-A) I wanna only hafta shovel one side if that door gets drifted in, after which I wiggle both cars out of that shoveled side.”
The following winter, this happened.
-B) An eight-foot wide door wouldn't clear my Ford E250 van, which is around nine feet wide over the outside mirrors.
And that opening is eight feet high to clear that van.
The first thing I did when I designed the house was measure that van.
My garage was designed to swallow it.
No more oil-changes in the snow.
Attach door to pull-chain, and it hangs; BANG!
I climbed up next to the power operator; it sounded like the bang was coming from that.
“Okay, try it now,” I said.
BANG! The pull-chain was flopping all over the place.
I felt around. There was a tiny pad the pull-chain was supposed to be riding on, but it wasn't.
“I have a hunch this pull-chain is supposed to be riding on that pad. Since it ain't, that pull-chain can laterally hang up on something.
I have a hunch this pull-chain has stretched; it no longer has enough tension.”
What to do......
“There's a chain-tensioner on the other side. What if I tighten that?”
I got out a half-inch open-end wrench, and tightened the chain-tensioner.
“Okay, try it now,” I said.
Hello; the pull-chain is now riding that tiny pad, no longer flopping all over.
The garage-door closed fully; no bang.
“Okay, that's all I'm doing. The door works. I don't wanna over-tension it.”
Back to base, RolyDoor.
Do not collect $200 for service-call.

• “Linda Hughes” is my wife of 42+ years.
• Our house was designed by us, but built by a contractor. (We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester, NY. —We originally lived in Rochester.)
• “Outside rear-view mirrors” on the doors of the van. They were large, for towing a trailer.
• Our current garage-door (#2) was sold to us and installed by “RolyDoor” in Rochester, NY.