Why You Should Not Leave Your Garage Door Open

There are many stories about how unsafe the garage door could be. Actually if not careful, with some simple tool, it can be broke in within seconds as demonstrated in the following video.

I implemented the zip tie protection in my garage some time back. And today I got some new insight about why you should not leave your garage door open and unattended. Of course, there is risk that some people might drop in and pick up something from your garage. But it could be much worse than that.

The story started as my garage door opener button in my car broke. So I went to Homedepot nearby to get a new remote garage opener and found plenty of choices (some universal and some manufacture specific). I bought this Chamberlain keychain garage door remote for $34.99. To my surprise, the programming is so simple that it can finish within 1 minutes. Here is the instruction comes with the remote.

You can see that if you have physical access to the garage door opener, anybody with a tiny remote can gain access to your garage. Just imagine a mindful thief with a remote walking around in your community. It doesn’t take long for him to gain access to your garage and subsequently your home.

It is potentially huge risk here in the garage!

Along with this observation that you should not leave your garage door open and unattended, here are several other advice you might find very useful:

• Don’t leave the garage door opener in the car (instead program it in your car or get a small keychain remote opener as I bought).
• Lock the door to the garage. Actually you should treat it as if it is your front door, so use solid wood door and possibly add a peek hole in there.
• Zip tie the release handle (as shown in the Youtube video above)

Hope you find this information useful, now stay safe!