Garage Door Buttons

Automatic Garage Door Button

Click on images to enlarge

I frequently want to close one or both of the garage doors while I am standing at the front of the house or exiting the garage. In the early days of garage door openers, I could press the button at the back of the garage and run through the open doorway while it closed.

In more recent years, garage door opener manufacturers have developed invisible beams to reverse the door just in case an unattended infant child happens to crawl past the opening as the door closes. (After all, I hear that happens to infant-less couples all the time.) Now days, if I'm running to try to beat the door as it closes, I have to jump over the beam and duck the closing the door at the same time.

I'm getting a little old for all that excitement.

The solution is to install a new button next to the door just inside the garage.

Now, all I have to do to close one of the doors, is reach in the garage a little and press the button.

To save money, I don't buy the expensive buttons packaged and marketed specially for garage doors. Instead, I find that door bell buttons work fine. I can use a lighted button if I wish, but the garage door opener light is always on as I exit the garage, so it is never difficult to find the button.

Un-lighted, plastic buttons sell at home improvement stores for as little as a buck or two. For wiring, I buy the quantity I need in the wiring department at The Home Depot or Lowe's. Lamp wire sells for a few cents a foot and you can order it in any length. Lamp wire is also very flexible and easy to use.

Off-the-shelf door bell buttons are designed under the assumption that it will be wired from behind. In my installations, I drill a hole in the top of the button for the lamp wire to slip through. The wire is then attached to the wall using insulated U nails. I space the U nails every couple of feet or so apart. In this most recent installation, I considered routing the lamp wire through the ceiling, but having exposed low-current wiring in a garage doesn't bother me. It makes the project go a lot more quickly if routing wire through the ceiling is a problem. In our home, the Bonus Room is built above the garage, so access above the ceiling in the garage is obstructed.

The lamp wire is routed from the new button to the back side of the garage door opener and attached to the same two leads that the original garage door button was attached. It does not matter which lead goes to which connection. Either way, the two leads are bridged when the button is pressed.

This project is fast and makes it a lot easier to close the garage door without running away from the button at the back of the garage or waiting until access to a remote control is handy. In the photo at left, the white lamp wire is connected to the same leads as the brown wires from the original garage door opener.

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