Garage Door Opener

The garage door at my mum's house is a couple of years older than I am and I don't know which of us is in better shape. It's huge and enormously sturdy, it was made by Westland Engineers Ltd (that's right, military helicopters and garage doors) and it seems to be designed to withstand an armed siege. I don't know what it weighs but it's all two men can do to lift it and move it a few paces. I drilled a pair of 8mm holes through one of the stringers and it took 10 minutes and left me with a large bruise on my shoulder from where I was pushing the drill. The swarf comes off in tiny hard sharp hot flakes and the drill bit is now blunt.

In the late 70s and early 80s the door was much taller than me so the procedure to open it was to unlock it and pull the handle and the bottom edge while a friend stood on the bathroom stool and thumped the top left hand corner – where it would usually bind.

The first golden age of garage door opening was from about '85 to '95 when I was tall and strong enough to operate it by myself and the mechanism was in a reasonable state of repair.

In the late 90s my father and I hired a yacht-rigging supplier who manufactured replacements for the wire ropes, thimbles and pulleys that joined the heavy door to the 8 springs that support its weight. It was an excellent refurbishment, but the original springs were irreplaceable and starting to weaken.

By 2012 more than one of the original springs was rusted through and the door was inoperable. With the help of a carpenter I re-hung the door on more traditional support gear with horizontal rails, lever arms and a pair of enormously stiff springs.

My mother is now in her 80s and the door has got too heavy for her so this weekend I fitted a large electrical opener to it. The procedure for opening the door is now to find the car-keys and push the button on the fob. So begins the second golden age of garage door opening.

Richard "433MHz" B