[DeTomaso] Shop Design garage door opener thoughs

asajay at asajay.com asajay at asajay.com
Wed Feb 27 16:50:29 EST 2008


Agreed,  I've had the unfortunate job of respooling my door cables, on  
my own, without calling the door techs.  It's nasty hard work if you  
don't know what you are doing.  And I'm not a door technician.

I looked at the install guide for the Liftmaster unit.  It shows a  
tension device that is supposed to be mounted just below the cable  
spool which places a roller on the cable.  If the cable slacks, the  
pulley moves on a level and it closes a connection, sending a signal  
to the opener that it is NOT to move the door in the down direction.

As far as I can tell, there is NO such system on the Wayne Dalton  
units (I downloaded and looked at their specs yesterday).  Their unit  
attaches to the jackshaft in place of one of the tension springs.  If  
there is some kind of tension monitor, it must be inside the device.   
I don't see that as being possible, because the motor is attached to  
the jackshaft and doesn't care about tension of a cable attached to a  
pulley, attached to the jackshaft.  i.e. the tension device is an  
externally necessary device.  (As far as I can tell at thie time)

So right now, between the two, I'd go with the Liftmaster because it  
-does- contain a cable tension monitor device.

If you have a Liftmaster, you should have one of these on your system.  
  Check it out.

Asa Jay

Quoting Ken Green <kenn_green at yahoo.com>:

> Asa,
>
>       Maybe the Wayne Dalton monitors cable tension, but the   
> Liftmaster attached to the end of the shaft and I don't see much   
> room to monitor cable tension.  The installer did come out and   
> adjust something, but I wasn't home.  I suppose the current could be  
>  sensed and the motor shut down if the load is not in an expected   
> range?
>
>       But I still think anything that turns the shaft versus   
> directly moves the door could have a problem.  It's OK for me, but   
> your wife could be unhappy if the door won't close and she needs to   
> leave.
>
>       The problem is that if the cable(s) get messed up, you can't   
> even manually close the door.  I guess that's the real issue.  It's   
> a lot worse than an opener that you just pull a release rope and   
> close the door manually.
>
>   Ken
>
>
> asajay at asajay.com wrote:
>   Hmmm,
>
> Not to say it can't happen. The installation guide shows a cable
> tension monitoring device that is supposed to be installed to prevent
> this kind of unspooling. Was that part of the system installed in
> your garage? The cable tension thingy didn't look to be a part of the
> Wayne Dalton setups.
>
> Asa Jay
>
>
> Quoting Ken Green :
>
>> We had a similar opener installed about a year ago, and the
>> installer did NOT like the Wayne-Dalton unit. He recommended a
>> Liftmaster:
>>
>> http://www.liftmaster.com/consumerweb/products/pflResidentialJackshaft.htm
>>
>> It's really slick, but there is one issue with this type. They
>> turn the reels instead of pushing the door to close it. If the door
>> binds at all, the reels keep turning and the cables come off the
>> reels. It's OK if you catch it immediately (well, not OK for your
>> wife), and can be corrected, but it can turn into a mess quickly,
>> and it JAMS the door open. The first time this happended was when I
>> closed the door last August planning to leave to drive to Monterey.
>> About 3 hours later, I finally got it closed and left 3 hours late
>> for a 350 mile drive. I was not happy.
>>
>> Ken
>>
>> "P. Rimov" wrote:
>> If you are planning on using conventional roll up garage doors and are
>> planing on a four post lift check out these guys for a garage door opener.
>> http://www.wayne-dalton.com/DirectDrive.asp We are going to use these for
>> our new house in a couple of years.
>>
>> Paul
>>
>>
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