If you are a parent with young kids in the house, it is common to identify all the safety hazards that they can get into. While you are busy covering up electrical sockets and padding the corners of tables, you may not have put much thought into your garage door. This can cause some safety issues because they might not fully understand the consequences of playing around a moving garage door. Here are some things you can do to keep them safe.

Safety Precautions To Take

You should never let a child use the remote control for your garage door as a toy. From the very beginning, treat it as a serious device that should only be used for getting in and out of the garage. Once they view it as a toy, it is hard to teach them otherwise. This includes treating the garage door like game, with trying to rush underneath the door before it closes shut. While it may seem innocent at first, it can cause serious injury if the door somehow closes on them.

Your garage door opener located inside the garage should be in a place that is out of reach for a child to get to. Try to keep it about 5 ft. above ground level, and at the opposite end of your garage away from the door.

Locate the electronic eye motion sensor so that it is several inches off the ground. It should not be flush with the ground so it is easy to step over, but it shouldn't be so high that children can easily walk under it.

Maintenance To Perform

You should test the safety mechanisms to make sure they work. You'll want the electric eye motion sensor to cause the door to go into reverse when something crosses its path. The garage door should also reverse if it has any sort of resistance from an object being underneath it.

It's also a good idea to make sure that all the moving parts are in working order. You should inspect the springs, pulleys, cables, hinges, and tracks annually. These are the parts that can break unexpectedly and can be quite difficult to repair on your own. For example, a lot of tension is put on the garage door springs, so safety mechanisms need to be installed to prevent the springs from snapping off at high speeds when they break. It is best to have a garage door repair contractor do these things for you. Check out http://aaagaragedoorinc.com for more maintenance tips and if you need repairs done on your garage door.