Garage Door Openers

The case is closed -- and now your garage door can be, too. A federal appeals court in Washington has ruled that it's OK for Skylink Group to sell its universal garage door openers, thwarting an effort by rival Chamberlain Group. Chamberlain had sued Skylink under, of all things, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Garage door remote not working? The Pentagon may be to blame. Not because of any grand conspiracy theory, but rather the mundane use of a radio frequency the military hadn't used much before. Homeowners in coastal Orange County are among the latest to discover this quirk. There, signals from Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach have been interfering with garage door openers as far as half a mile away since March. That's when testing began on a new radio system that will allow the base to network with local fire and police agencies during emergencies.

Garage Door Openers Recalled: The recall involves several models of Stanley and Fimbel garage door openers, sold under the brands of EZ Lift and Power Lift between Jan. 14 and April 11. The Stanley Electronics division of the Stanley Works, Novi, Mich., said garage doors may open or close without warning due to a problem with printed circuit boards used in affected door openers.

It seemed at first like an open-and-shut case when the repairman came to inspect Shelley Slack's malfunctioning garage door. The Yorba Linda resident was baffled when her garage door -- and that of a neighbor -- would mysteriously open and close several times a day over the last few weeks. The repairman had a quick diagnosis: Military radio transmissions were playing havoc with her automatic garage door-opening system. He may have been right. The U.S.

All garage-door openers manufactured after Jan. 1 will be required to have safety mechanisms to prevent the doors from crushing people or animals standing beneath them. Fifty-four children have been killed by garage doors since 1982, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, despite the stiffening of safety standards that year. The new rule is contained in legislation proposed by Rep. Gerry Sikorski (D-Minn.) and supported by an association of trial lawyers.

With President Reagan back in Washington, hundreds of automatic garage door openers are again working in San Bernardino. The doors, controlled by radio signals, had been on the blink, and repairman Larry Murdock blamed high-power signals from the President's flying command post. The airplane sits at nearby March Air Force Base while the President is visiting his ranch in Santa Barbara County.

Larry Murdoch, owner of Genie Garage Doors, likes to say that "garage door openers are like garbage disposals--if you ain't got one, you ain't livin'. " But lately, hundreds of his customers have complained that their garage door openers ain't workin'. Murdoch said it took "a lot of investigating" to figure out that the President of the United States may have something to do with the problem.

Hundreds of homeowners in the east San Francisco Bay Area are being confounded by uncooperative automatic garage door openers, thanks to an unspecified government agency transmitting radio signals from a mountaintop, officials said. "We know it's a government agency," Tom Hora, a spokesman with the Federal Communications Commission in Livermore, said Tuesday, "but we can't say which one."

It seemed at first like an open-and-shut case when the repairman came to inspect Shelley Slack's malfunctioning garage door. The Yorba Linda resident was baffled when her garage door -- and that of a neighbor -- would mysteriously open and close several times a day over the last few weeks. The repairman had a quick diagnosis: Military radio transmissions were playing havoc with her automatic garage door-opening system. He may have been right. The U.S.

I haven't used a key to open or lock my car door since purchasing my Acura sedan, which came equipped with a remote that performs those functions (it also opens the trunk!). It's a simple and practical technology that makes life easier when hands and arms are occupied with groceries and bulky gym bags. But all that convenience, all those wonderful milliseconds of saved time, were negated each time I approached my front door.

The case is closed -- and now your garage door can be, too. A federal appeals court in Washington has ruled that it's OK for Skylink Group to sell its universal garage door openers, thwarting an effort by rival Chamberlain Group. Chamberlain had sued Skylink under, of all things, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Elevator Gallery may look like an art gallery, but it doesn't act like one. The 2-month-old store a block from Venice Beach is quite the hyphenate: a gallery-clothing emporium-flower shop-jewelry store owned by Kevin and Marisa Kelly and Zen Nishimura, who share a background in design and manufacturing.

Alvin Cowans spent nearly $1 million for a house sporting all the technological conveniences -- from a stereo system that piped music to every room to telephone caller ID that flashed on the big-screen TV. He had barely plugged everything in when the ghosts appeared. Cowans heard them over his cordless phone, chattering like a fax machine even though he didn't own one. And they played with the automatic garage door, sending it up and down when no one was home.

A garage door that is well cared for and properly maintained is safer and will last longer than one that is not. As the largest moving object in the home, a garage door is a force to be reckoned with. An improperly adjusted garage door or automatic opener can cause serious injuries. Pinched, crushed and amputated fingers, fractures, crushed pets and injured children are some tragic occurrences reported by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Sadly, some of these injuries result in death.

Question: Our home is about 20 years old. Before buying it, we hired a home inspector and were pleased with the thorough disclosure he provided. But one of his recommendations has left us with a very expensive problem. The inspector pointed out that both garage-door openers lacked automatic reverse function for child safety. When we asked if this repair would be costly, he said that "any fool with a screwdriver could do it."

I haven't used a key to open or lock my car door since purchasing my Acura sedan, which came equipped with a remote that performs those functions (it also opens the trunk!). It's a simple and practical technology that makes life easier when hands and arms are occupied with groceries and bulky gym bags. But all that convenience, all those wonderful milliseconds of saved time, were negated each time I approached my front door.

QUESTION: My home inspector found an unsafe garage door opener, but the seller refused to fix it. According to the inspector, the opener is hazardous to children because it won't reverse if someone gets caught under it. The seller says I should pay for the repairs because safety reverse was not required on door openers when the house was built. We asked the inspector to provide a copy of the code requirement, but he was unable to find it in the code book.

When a garage door equipped with an automatic opener trapped 7-year-old James Lee by the neck and killed him last month, the Fullerton boy became the 24th youngster to die in such an accident in the United States since 1981. The deaths in 16 states all involved children under the age of 12, and most were between 6 and 8 years old, according to the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission. "It's a spooky thing . . . like having a guillotine in your house," said Gordon L.

QUESTION: My home inspector found an unsafe garage door opener, but the seller refused to fix it. According to the inspector, the opener is hazardous to children because it won't reverse if someone gets caught under it. The seller says I should pay for the repairs because safety reverse was not required on door openers when the house was built. We asked the inspector to provide a copy of the code requirement, but he was unable to find it in the code book.

Jim Boyle came home from work one Tuesday and noticed his garage door was open. Strange, because he had closed it when he left that morning. Inside his single-story house, someone had rifled through every closet and drawer, making off with $8,000 in leather jackets, fur coats, power tools and camera gear. Boyle had received a rude awakening to the high-tech world of garage-door opener burglaries.