Garage Door Opener Saturday
Oct 10th, 2009 by Alex
After eleven hours, I managed to replace my garage door opener. At last, the old Craftsman chain drive — which was having fundamental problems staying powered during such routine actions such as opening and closing, as well as non-correctable problems closing evenly — has been replaced by a new Genie PowerLift H4000 screw drive opener.
It isn’t a home improvement unless you take at least two trips to Home Depot, Lowes, or your favorite local hardware store. You may do little projects around the house with supplies on hand, but it isn’t the same as having to run out and get one or two fasteners that didn’t come in the package, then realizing that you need something else while you’re there (which may or may not be related to the task at hand), then driving home and discovering that you need additional hardware to utilize said fasteners you went to the store for in the first place.
It should be noted that installing a new garage door opener is easier than replacing one, especially if you’re replacing it with a different model. I could have gone with an identical chain-driven model from Sears, replacing just the motor and leaving all the existing hardware and wiring. That would have been smart and perhaps a better use of my Saturday, but I was hoping for a quieter model and something with a better warranty and so the project turned into more of an upgrade than a mere replacement.
Taking down the old opener was fairly straightforward, but messy. Ten years of oil and grease whose staying power were good in that they never once dropped onto the floor or onto a car, but bad in that they were still there in force when I went to take everything apart. I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated Fast Orange and Lava as I have today.
As long as you have the right tools, assembling a new opener is pretty easy. Genie provides all of the parts in colored bags; each bag corresponds to a different portion of the install. The instructions were useful, but so detailed that I kept losing my place from one step to the next.
All was going well until I got to the point of mounting the motor to the ceiling bracket, when I realized that the ceiling bracket was six inches out of place. Apparently the Craftsman track is six inches longer than the Genie track. The ceiling joists run along the width of the garage (24 inches on center), not the length. Before, the angle iron was affixed right below a joist. Moving the angle iron six inches toward the door wasn’t going to cut it, since there was no joist there and mere drywall wasn’t going to support the motor and track.
Enter additional bracing in the form of 2×4s (which I had) and lag screws (the cause of two trips to Home Depot). The County would be very proud of me for using lag screws instead of deck screws. While I was at the Depot I picked up a stud finder to assist with the joist locations (which for some reason I’ve never added to my collection of tools), a can of Blaster GDL, and the lag screws. The second trip was to pick up washers for said lag screws; oversight on my part, I hadn’t considered washers since the previous lag screws were flanged.
After pre-drilling and mounting the 2×4s to the ceiling joists with 2-1/2 inch lags, I affixed the angle iron between the two and hung the motor. I think it’s a tad over-engineered since I could probably hang from the 2×4s, but it’s my car sitting underneath the thing. And a few extra dollars and a little extra time is worth my piece of mind.
It worked out well. And compared to the incumbent mounting job (by whom, I’m not sure) it’s stable as can be. While the old Craftsman was operating, you could see it shake from side to side. You could tap it lightly on the side and watch it move similarly. With the new mount, there’s no movement at all. Until today, I had no idea how shaky it was before. That probably didn’t help matters much, though it’s a moot point now.
I also did some maintenance on the garage door itself. It had been a while. Applied GDL to the tracks, wheels, and bearings. Also checked and leveled the track itself, since it was slightly off-kilter. I need to remind myself to re-lubricate the track periodically.
Wiring was pretty simple, but it took a long time on the ladder. I thought it was odd that none of the sensors care where the positive and ground were attached, nor did the connections to the motor housing. Simple circuits, I guess. Insulated staples are a real pain, though they do look a lot cleaner than wire ties in this case.
It works.
Open and closed, with no problems. Setting the open and close force was a breeze, as was verifying the various safety features. After a bit of wiring cleanup, I was done. With a bare minimum of extra parts too! Some of which were optional and others spares, I think. I hope.
Overall, I’m pretty pleased.
The screw drive is much quieter than the old chain drive system, both in the garage and in the room above. The action appears to be a little slower than the chain, but it’s much more smooth. There’s less vibration through the floor, too. The biggest noise emanated from the wheels on the track. Soon to be silenced with more GDL, but previously you couldn’t even hear the wheels over the din of the motor itself. The new unit uses two 60W bulbs, which makes for a much brighter arrival than the one 60W bulb in the old unit; for nighttime arrivals where the outdoor lights aren’t on, this is a nice thing. Not having to re-seat the garage door when leaving for the day will be a nice thing too, especially once it gets colder.
In retrospect, I think I spent most of the day shuffling a six foot ladder around on the garage, climbing up and standing on it, climbing down, moving it elsewhere, climbing up and standing again, etc. I suspect my shins will be bruised tomorrow from leaning against the top of the thing, but it’s a small price to pay for a completed project.
You know, you could have had all that trouble taken care of for about $90 and 1hrs wait.
Daryl: True, hiring a contractor to do an install is always an option. If it were a direct trade-off between my time and money, it would definitely be worth it to hire out. Unfortunately, the last “professional” install was a bit on the shoddy side. Between that and the pride I can take in doing my own work to my house, this time around it was worth it.
Good write up and it sounds familiar as I just finished installing one of these today. Actually, I did it over 3 days - power head and rail, mounting, and then wiring. It worked without a hitch on the first try and I agree, it’s smooooth!
My only improvement would be to fix the sensor wires to the ceiling rather than clip them to the rail. I also wish that the power head mounting holes were on tabs parallel to the track rather than perpendicular.
They did a great job matching colored hardware bags with colored sections of the instruction sheets. It was a good weekend project!