Gone are the days when people had to open garage doors manually. Garage door openers are widely accessible now. A garage door opener is a switch or remote-controlled motorized device that opens and closes a garage door.
Garage door openers offer convenience to you and possible burglars and trespassers. These shady people may use this device to enter your house while you sleep, and hence, you might want to disable it at night. To do that, you can unplug the device, use a timer, add an on/off switch in your room, or put the device in vacation mode.
Physically locking the garage door is an option, but only if you have a good memory. If you don’t have that, you may accidentally use the garage door opener while the door is physically locked. That will bend the door in half.
Below are tutorials on how you can disable your garage door opener at night with different methods.
Method 1: Pull the electric cord
Garage door openers are electrically powered. So, they must be connected to a power source in order to function. And unlike emergency lights, garage door openers don’t have batteries that they keep fully charged, so they can’t be used when power gets cut out.
That said, an easy way to disable the garage door opener at night is by unplugging the electric cord.
While that’s an easy solution, it could be inconvenient. So, you may like the alternative methods more.
Method 2: Install an on/off switch
What if someone has a universal remote that can open your garage door while you sleep? That puts you and your family in danger. Therefore, disabling your garage door opener at night is really a wise decision.
As mentioned above, plugging and unplugging the electric cord is such a hassle. You can wire an on-off switch to the unit if you don’t like doing that.
Once you switch it off, no one can activate the garage door opener – not even the people with universal remotes or you. The best thing is that flicking the switch is faster than pulling the cord and putting it back.
Method 3.A: Plug the door opener into a timer
There’s still an even more convenient method than using an on/off switch. You can automate the process by hooking the garage door opener with a timer.
The timer would automatically cut power at a given time at night. You would set what time that would be. Then, at the time in the morning that you set, the timer will bring back power to the garage door opener, so you can use it again.
Method 3.B: Resetting the on/off timer
There is a slight problem with using an on/off timer. If a power interruption occurs or you lose power for some reason, the timer would lose the time you set.
Therefore, the on/off windows for your garage door opener will be skewed. So, you have to fix the timing.
Go to the timer and set what time when the device should turn off the garage door opener. Then, do the same for turning it on.
If you have a more expensive timer, you may not need to reset the time when you lose power. The device will save the setting and default to that when the power comes back.
Method 4: Turn on Vacation Mode
Electric garage door openers recognize that thieves can take advantage of the door opener when you are on vacation. So, they added the vacation mode.
This setting prevents people from opening your garage door using a remote. The opener will only work using the keypad.
But keep the model of your garage door opener in mind. Many models will let you use the remote one last time after activating vacation mode. That’s to allow you to close the garage door before you leave for your vacation.
There are no rules that say you can only use this feature when you are going on a vacation. You can also activate the vacation mode before you sleep.
Method 5: Turn off the dedicated breaker
Your garage door opener may have a dedicated breaker. In that case, you don’t have to pull the electric cord out every evening and put it back on every morning. Instead, you simply have to turn the breaker off at night and turn it on in the morning.
Method 6: Use the garage door opener’s lock feature
You don’t have to wire some electric garage door openers with switches and timers and such. They come with a built-in lock feature. Similar to an on/off switch, you only have to press this button to make the garage door opener accessible or inaccessible with a remote.
The lock feature functions like the vacation mode in other garage door openers.
