Jun 29th, 2008
Another color of Green
Last week, Angela and I were leaving to run some errands and the garage door stubbornly would not close. I got out of the car and tried again from inside the garage, but all I could get was some whirring and then flashing flights. “Great”, I thought, figuring this would be yet another in the long list of annoyingly expensive house repairs.
I pulled the opener apart and saw that the main gear had cracked in half, and other gears were very worn. I went online to research options and found that new openers are not cheap, nor was getting a guy out to do anything about this. I dug deeper and learned that there is a service kit available for our unit, which comes with most of the wear items for a number of models. Price: $25. Much better! I ordered it Monday, and we spent the rest of the week rearranging our enter/exit routine to deal with manually working the garage door.
On Friday the kit arrived, and yesterday I attempted to install it. Success! It did take about 2 1/2 hours and had me disassemble practically the whole opener, just like the reviews cautioned, but it wasn’t terribly difficult. Anyone with basic hand tools and the patience to read detailed instructions could make the repairs. It was definitely a more satisfying ending watching the door go up and down, as opposed to writing out a check!
Afterward I felt good not just for completing a little DIY and saving $275, but mainly because all I had to throw away were a few broken gears and some hardware. I hate the constant stream of trash that’s generated by all of our non-serviceable wares, and not having to throw out our a otherwise good garage door opener (made in 1996) made my day.