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Kids, pets and a moving garage door

The garage door is the heaviest moving thing most families own, and in a lot of houses it is also the front door, the toy shed and the edge of the cricket pitch. That mix is normal and mostly fine. It is worth ten minutes of thought all the same, because the parts of a garage door that catch children are not the parts most people watch.

What the safety beams actually cover

Powered garage doors sold in Australia sit under an electrical safety standard, AS/NZS 60335.2.95, and the protection most people know about is the pair of infrared sensors near the floor on each side of the opening. While the door is closing they watch the gap. Break the beam and the door stops and goes back up.

That is a genuinely good protection, and it is worth understanding exactly what it is: a single line across the opening, low down. It catches a child who runs through the doorway. It does not watch the space between the panels as they fold, it does not watch a hand on the bottom edge, and on many doors it is not looking at all while the door is opening. Treat the beams as one layer, not as supervision.

Test them now and then. With the door closing, put something solid like a broom handle through the beam near the floor. The door should stop and reverse. If it doesn't, stop using the opener until it has been looked at, and never tape over a sensor or hold the wall button down to force a door past one.

The pinch points nobody points out

• Between the panels. On a sectional door, the joint between each pair of panels closes as the door curves back along the tracks. Small fingers hooked over a panel edge go with it. Newer doors are often designed with finger-safe joints that keep the gap closed as they fold, which is a fair thing to ask about when you are choosing a door.
• The bottom edge. The gap under a closing door is the natural place for a hand or a paw. Teach the household that the door is not something you duck under or reach beneath, however slowly it is moving.
• The tracks and rollers. The rollers run in tracks either side, and hands on the track while the door moves are hands in the wrong place. Keep bikes, bins and toys clear of both tracks so nobody has a reason to reach in.
• The springs and cables above. Not something children go near, but worth knowing yourself: they hold the whole weight of the door as stored tension and are never a DIY part.

A safe spot, and why it works

Kidsafe, the child safety peak body, suggests giving children a designated safe spot to stand while the garage door or an electric gate is closing, alongside supervising them around a closing door in the first place. It is a simple idea and it works because it replaces a rule about what not to do with a place to be. A chalk cross on the path, the second step, the letterbox: anywhere in sight of the driver and well clear of the door and the tracks.

The other half of it is the driveway itself. A door going up usually means a car about to move, and a reversing car is its own hazard: the safe spot earns its keep at both ends of the trip.

The remote is not a toy

A handset that lives on a visor is interesting to a child, and a door that goes up and down on command makes a good game right up until it doesn't. Keep remotes out of reach and out of the toy box, and if there is a wall button inside the garage, the standard advice is to mount it high enough that a child cannot reach it and where whoever presses it can see the whole doorway.

Most remotes also run on a small button battery. Those are a serious swallowing hazard for young children, so a handset with a loose or missing battery cover is worth fixing straight away rather than leaving in a drawer.

The habits worth having

• Watch it all the way. Stay with the door until it is fully closed or fully open. It takes about fifteen seconds and it is the single habit that covers everything above.
• One person, one button. Whoever presses it owns the doorway until the door has finished moving.
• Say something when it changes. A door that has started reversing on its own, sounding harder, or closing crookedly has changed its behaviour, and the household noticing that early is how it gets fixed before it becomes a failure.

When it stops behaving

A door that reverses for no reason, closes unevenly, or refuses to stay down is telling you something, and our guides on why a door goes heavy and what to check when the remote stops working cover the usual explanations. If the beams have failed a test, a cable has come off, or the door has dropped or gone crooked in its tracks, stop using it, keep the opening clear, and book it in.