Unfortunately for us we know that it is a possibility that someone will break into our homes with the intent to steal. Often, the garage door is the first plan of attack for people, since they can be easier depending on how well you’ve fortified your door against intrusion.
There have been accounts of poeple having their cars broken into even if they aren’t parked at home, and having their garage door remotes stolen! People will do this and either steal your registration, or just take a photo of it, and later come back and just hit that button opening your home to them to take whatever they want!
So how do you keep yourself, your home, and your belongings safe in such a case?
If You Park Outside Your Home
If you are someone who parks outside your home, but uses the garage to access your house, you could be at risk even if your opener hasn’t been stolen. Sadly, it’s easy to break into a vehicle and steal a remote to get into the house, and anyone could pop a lock or break a window to gain access.
If you are someone who parks outside your garage, you can simply hit a button on your wall button, inside the garage to lock it. What does this button look like? Well, a lock! There is a little icon of a padlock on one of the buttons on most wall controls that if you hit once you can lock the opener to all remotes without un-programming them.
Just remember to unlock it when you need to use your opener remotes again! This way even if someone breaks into a vehicle to steal your remote, it won’t work to open your door!
Another idea would be to take your remote with you! You can keep it in your pocket, or a purse if you carry one. That way even if someone were to break into your car to get your remote, they wouldn’t be able to get it!
If you treat the remote like it’s a key to your house, and keep it on your person or in the house itself then you greatly reduce the risk of someone being able to use it to enter your home.
If Your Remote is Stolen
If someone steals your remote, as described earlier, or you lose it, it might be a better idea to completely un-program all the remote memory from your opener. If you have a craftsman or liftmaster opener it’s very easy to do this, all you have to do is push and hold the learn button for 5 to 10 seconds. This erases the ability of any remote to work with your opener.
To reprogram any remotes that you might still have, just push the learn button again, and then push the button on your remote that you want to use. This has to be done for each remote that is programmed, or it won’t work.
So If you un-program your remotes, and then reprogram only the one that wasn’t lost or stolen you don’t have to worry because the missing remote won’t work any longer. Of course, you could just lock your opener against remotes in this instance too, but if you leave home and need to use another remote, you won’t be able to!
In this instance wiping the openers memory is a much better idea.
If You Want Extra Protection
Almost every garage door is equipped with a slide lock installed near the bottom of the door, that slides into a slot on the garage door track. This metal piece ensures that you cannot open the door by pushing it open or using the remote. It can only be disengaged by sliding the lock back out of the slot.
We install these on all doors because they come standard, but we don’t really recommend using them very often. The reason for this is that it’s easy to forget that your slide lock is engaged and try to use the opener to open the door. If you do this, the opener will continue to try and pull the door opener with can severely damage the door, track, and opener, resulting in a costly repair.
We usually recommend that people who don’t have an opener installed on their door at all use this. If you have an opener installed on your door, it is essentially locked in the close position unless you pull the emergency release on the opener.
Some people will lock their opener against remotes, and also engage the slide lock, especially if they are going out of town for a while, or they have stuff in their garage that they want to keep very secure. Either way, you should use the slide lock with caution so that you don’t forget that it’s engaged.