I no sooner post a blog about being a new home owner than, lo and behold, we had one of those, “Oh, that’s just great!” moments. You know what I’m talking about. One of those moments when something breaks or stops working as expected and all you can think of is “How much is this going to cost me?” This adventure, though proving to be minor, also made clear that it was most definitely a wise decision to have bought a home warranty.
This past Monday, as I was leaving for work, when I pushed the button on the remote to close the garage door, nothing happened. I pushed it again; same result. So, thinking that maybe it was the remote that had failed I got out of the car with the intention of closing the garage door from the wall switch and just exiting through the back door. It still wouldn’t close. I kept messing with the wall switch until it closed, and like moron, opened it again hoping it was just a glitch, but, you guessed it, it wouldn’t close again. I headed into the house to let Roxane know, since she was still in bed, locked all the regular doors and headed to work (only barely making it on time).
I proceeded to contact our home warranty company while Roxanne researched “garage door will not close” online. She managed to “fix” it by cleaning the lenses on the optic sensors that prevent the door from closing if something is in the way. Despite it appearing to be simply dirty sensors, we decided to keep the appointment with a service technician that our warranty company had arranged just to make sure.
Thankfully, it turned out to indeed have only been dirt on the sensor lenses, but the technician did notice that there was a loose wire on one of them. He also inspected the entire opener and the door itself, tightened up a couple of things and lubricated the hinges. He also gave us some maintenance pointers and a spare screw drive carriage (because those can wear out eventually). All in all, probably worth the $75 copay for the warranty coverage just to make sure all was well and we now know the process for getting stuff done through our warranty (I see a new gas stove/oven range in our near future).
~ JC