A garage door remote is a wonderful convenience, especially on wet days when you don't want to get out of your dry car in order to manually open the garage door.  However, garage door remotes can also make your garage easy pickings for burglars.  Here are some top tips on how to stop would-be thieves from using your garage door remote against you.

Always keep your garage door remote with you

One of main problems with garage door remotes is that people tend to leave them in their vehicles, providing a gift to the opportunist thief who sees your car parked on your driveway with the remote left out on the passenger seat!

Many garage door remotes are rather large won't fit easily into a wallet or purse.  However, smaller keychain versions are available from good DIY stores or directly from your garage door remote supplier.  All you have to do is match your existing remote's make and year of manufacture to that of the smaller version, and then follow the simple programming instructions that come with it.

Once you've acquired a new mini-remote, lock away the big original one somewhere inside your house, and keep the new one on your key fob so that you have it with you at all times.  

Upgrade your garage door remote with a timer

In a busy household where family are rushing off to work or to school, it can be easy to forget to close the garage door.  And in the summertime when you've been busy tidying the garage or coming and going all day fetching tools to use in the garden, you could easily neglect to press the button to close the door at the end of the day.

A good item to invest in is a timer for your garage door remote.  This handy gadget instructs the remote to automatically close the garage door, once a pre-set length of time has elapsed.  These devices can be easily installed on the keypad that connects the garage door track to the remote.

Foil thieves by using zip ties!

Automatic garage door remotes all feature a safety release mechanism that is operated by a manual grab handle fixed to the garage door.  This means that if your garage door remote fails and a person or vehicle becomes trapped beneath the door, you can open it manually from the inside.  Unfortunately, thieves can also trip the emergency release mechanism from outside the garage by simply reaching underneath and disengaging the safety release with a wire coat hanger.

You can combat this by locking the disengaging arm on the automatic door opener.  To do this, just fasten two zip ties around the arm to prevent it from being easily moved.  This tactic will be sufficient to prevent sneak thieves from tripping the door release, but in an emergency, a firm tug on the safety pull handle will snap the plastic ties and open the door.

In conclusion

You can still enjoy the convenience of your garage door remote, whilst improving garage security simply by following the tips given above.  For further information about garage door security, have a chat with your supplier.

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