Overhead Door Company of Birmingham Blog

Overhead Door Spotlight: Stewart Perry Construction

Posted by OHD Blogger on Thu, Oct 08, 2015 @ 06:00 AM

 

Stewart Perry Construction entrance

As Birmingham's oldest garage door provider, Overhead Door Company of Birmingham has had time to make an impact on the architecture of our city and surrounding areas. Today's post features the corporate campus of Stewart Perry Construction, a site that "won a national award from Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc., achieved the U.S. Green Building Council’s Silver LEED* certification and that the Stewart Perry team is proud to call home."

 

The kitchen features two aluminum sectional doors (511 / 521 Series) which frame unobstructed views of the beautiful landscape, allow light to infiltrate the building, and on particularly beautiful days, open the kitchen to the outdoors.

Stewart Perry Construction - kitchen with aluminum and glass sectional doors 

Photo courtsey of Stewart Perry website

 

 

Notice how open the space looks and feels with the floor-to-ceiling glazing. Click here for a brochure with more information about these commercial aluminum and glass sectional garage doors, or go ahead and request an estimate from our commercial department.

Stewart Perry's campus also features a barn used for equipment and lumber storage, as well as a millwork shop. The commercial overhead doors installed here are an industrial type called rolling steel doors

Fabricated of interlocking steel, stainless steel or aluminum curtains in a variety of slat profiles, finishes, and options, these doors are designed for durability and ease of service. Since these doors are made of small individual slats fitted together, the slats are made to easily be replaced if hit by a vehicle or damaged somehow.

 


 

If you'd like to learn more about any of the doors listed above contact us by phone or click on the link below to be contacted by one of our commercial managers.

Request an Estimate

Check back for more highlights of central Alabama's Overhead Doors. Do you know of a door that we should feature? Let us know about it in the comments section!


 

Tags: Commercial Garage Door, Rolling Steel Overhead Door

"Help! My garage door only opens a couple of inches and stops!"

Posted by Ali Tyler on Wed, Oct 01, 2014 @ 01:07 PM

 

This is another very common problem we hear described by customers. Unfortunately this problem is not usually a do-it yourself fix like the safety photo sensors we talked about in a previous blog post. However, we can talk about how to diagnose the problem so you'll be knowledgeable about the issue when placing a service call.

FIRST: Try to operate the garage door manually

This helps you determine if the problem is related to the door or the motor.

The garage door can be operated manually by disconnecting the garage door opener from the door using the red pull cord.

garage door disconnect

If the door is working properly it should be easy to lift by hand. This indicates that the springs (torsion springs in the case of the photo above) are working properly and are not the issue.

SECOND: If the door DOES NOT open manually...

We will now want to take a look at the garage door springs. There are two different types of springs for garage doors:

  1. Torsion spring(s): wound up above the garage door with a bar through the center of the springs.garage door torsion spring
    • Good Torsion Spring
               broken torsion spring
    • Broken Torsion Spring

  • Extension springs: stretch out or extend on either side of the garage door above the track

garage door extension spring  

Good Extension Spring

 

broken extension spring

Over-extended extension spring - notice the warped coils

THIRD: If you do see a broken or warped spring call Overhead Door Company of Birmingham

Garage door springs can be very dangerous to work with. We do sell them over the counter but ask that you bring in the old spring when you come so that we can match it exactly. This also shows that you understand how to properly handle the spring(s), although we still have you sign a waiver stating that you understand the dangers involved.

If your springs seem to be in good shape, there are a number of other options 

Once you begin to identify these springs and see what condition they are in, you should be able to know a little more about why your garage door has stopped working and what type of service is needed to get the garage door working again!

 

 

Tags: broken torsion spring, garage door disconnect, broken extension spring, garage door won't open

Rolling Steel Overhead Door in the Spotlight!

Posted by Ali Tyler on Tue, Dec 31, 2013 @ 08:47 AM

"The Auburn equestrian team defeated Georgia, 3-1, in a ride-off competition to win the 2013 NCEA Overall National Championship Saturday at the Extraco Events Center in Waco, Texas." 

What does this have to do with Overhead Doors, you ask? Well, take a look at the photo below from the Extraco Events Center:

Overhead Door Commercial Rolling Steel

Check out that beautiful Red Ribbon in the background!

Many residential and commercial garage door companies try to claim the name "overhead door" to describe their products, but only true Overhead Door Corporation distributors, like Overhead Door Company of Birmingham, can claim the prestigious Red Ribbon logo.

Red Ribbon: The Genuine. The Original. Overhead Door

Keep an eye out around town for our logo, you might notice it in more places than you'd expect!

Read more about the advantages of choosing the Red Ribbon on the Overhead Door Corporation's product page.

Tags: Commercial Garage Door, Rolling Steel Overhead Door, In the News, Red Ribbon

"Help! My garage door won't close with the remote!"

Posted by Ali Tyler on Wed, Dec 04, 2013 @ 02:45 PM

As a service-based company, we have a steady stream of phone calls from homeowners with garage door problems. Surprisingly, one of the questions we hear over and over can be easily handled without a service call. We're glad to talk our customer's through solutions over the phone, so we wanted to share them with you on our blog as well.

I'll begin with the most common phrase we hear from our customers, "My garage door won't close with the remote, and I have to hold down the wall-mounted button to close the door." I'm starting with this problem because it's the most common, but also because we're nearing the 22nd anniversary of an Safety Improvement Act where this all began: 

On December 3, 1992 the Safety Commission published their final rules for Automatic Garage Door Openers. These requirements stemmed from an earlier Congressional mandate in the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 1990.

Product & Safety Logo resized 600

"A Congressional mandate?? What's so serious about an Automatic Garage Door Opener?" you might ask. Well, prior to January 1, 1991 garage door openers were built to reverse if they came into contact with an object when closing. However, the force required to reverse the door varied and sometimes the object in the way was not substantial enough to trigger the reverse. 

Do you catch my drift here? Kids were getting squished..."in the United States, at least 85 children have had permanent brain injury or have died since 1974 as a result of accidents involving automatic door openers," and that was in 1996!

So...The Consumer Product & Safety Act of 1990 required "entrapment protection," which eventually developed into safety sensors, on all garage door openers manufactured on or after January 1, 1991.

SAFETY SENSORS

That brings us back to our initial question. Safety sensors (pictured below) are now installed with all new operators. As you can see, they look like tiny cameras and are mounted on either side of the garage door, inside the garage. Proper installation of photo eyes is three to five inches off the floor.

safety sensors

HOW THEY WORK: These safety sensors send an invisible beam across the opening to "tell" the operator whether or not its safe to close the door. In order to create the invisible beam, the safety sensors must be pointing directly at each other - this is indicated by a light on each of the sensors (you can see the faint green and amber lights on the safety sensors shown above).

PROBLEM: If the beam is broken, or the sensors are misaligned, the sensor light(s) will go off and subsequently tell the operator not close the door. The garage door may attempt to go down but will come right back up, and the overhead light on the garage door opener will blink.

This also disables any remotes or wireless keypads. A good way to see if this is what's wrong with your door is make sure nothing is blocking the door from closing and hold down the wall mounted button inside your garage. This is the override for the safety sensors. The wall button must be held down until the door closes completely. This feature forces the user to stand inside the garage, where they can clearly see that nothing is in the way, before they can close the garage door. This is a temporary fix, let's look at a long term solution.

SOLUTION

Obviously something large blocking the sensors, like a broom handle, vehicle tires, bicycle, etc. will cause prevent you from closing the door. If this is the case, simply move the object and the door should close.

If you don't see anything blocking the door, check for leaves or cobwebs stuck to the sensor. These safety sensors are very sensitive and even the smallest object can break that invisible beam. Simply clean the sensor(s) off and look for the sensor lights to come on again.

If you sensor lights have still not come on, the sensors may have been accidentally bumped or kicked, knocking them out of alignment with each other. This breaks that invisible beam, turns off one or both of the sensor lights, and prevents the door from operating with the garage door remote or wireless keypad.

To solve this problem, take hold of the misaligned sensor and gently push or pull it until the sensor light comes back on. You want both sensors to show a solid beam of light, a flickering beam could mean that they're almost lined up properly. Once both sensor lights are on, your garage door should be working properly again. 

STILL HAVING TROUBLE?

Check out this video to see the troubleshooting we just talked about:

If you've tried all of the solutions above and are still having trouble, contact us for troubleshooting help or to schedule a service call.

Tags: garage door opener repair, safety sensors, garage door not closing, DIY garage door repair