Protecting Your Home: Garage Safety Essentials

Jamie: 00:00:01

Welcome to Thoughts from the Crawl Space, a podcast where our goal as home inspection experts is to support and serve our community.

Whether you're a homeowner, home buyer, real estate agent, or investor, we believe everyone deserves solutions to their homeownership challenges and inspiration along the way. Your path to success starts here. Hello again, everybody. Today we are going to jump into garage safety.

Specifically, we're talking about, if you have a attached garage to the house, some of the hazards that can pose, some of the things to think about with storing of chemicals, vehicles, tools, pretty much everything related to garage. I think one of the biggest things, one of the funnest things I like to do is go out there and clean the garage and organize.

And it seems like an ongoing battle. You know, every time you open your garage door, you've got a variety of things that can blow in, from debris to dirt to whatever.

So if you leave your garage doors open a lot, it's going to get dirtier things blow around, et cetera, et cetera. But more specifically, we're going to start with some of the basics.

If we do a home inspection, what are some of the basics with regard to garage safety? What are the most important things to know? So let's just jump right in. Number one is your overhead garage door and the maintenance of it.

Now, the overhead garage door is obviously the single biggest door that you have in your house, or in most cases, it's going to be the single biggest door you have in your house. And again, in most cases, it has an automatic opener. Now, you may have two different doors, two smaller doors.

I think they can be 8 or 9 foot, or you just have one big door that's, you know, maybe 18ft, 16, 18ft, something like that. Either way, the same concept applies. This is a large moving object.

It has the potential to damage you or your vehicle probably more than anything else in the house. So first of all, on an overhead garage door, we're going to press the test button to make sure it actually operates.

We're going to listen for any sounds so you can do the same. The reason I'm telling you this, go home and do the same thing.

Press the test button, listen for any unusual squeaks or grinding noises or vibrating noises, anything like that. It should be relatively quiet. It shouldn't have any shaking, any rattling, any unneeded vibration should go up, it should go down.

All right, step one. Another important aspect of an overhead garage door is the safety function.

One of the most common modern, I guess you would say, safety functions is the what we Call them the reversing sensors.

Reversing sensors are those little devices at the base of the track on either side of the door, and they're pointing to each other, and they create an invisible laser line between them so that if you break that line when the door is coming down, it will automatically reverse. Now, this is a safety feature designed to prevent really anybody from getting damaged by the door.

It could be a small dog, could be a cat, could be any other kind of critter you got running around there. But more importantly, it could be safety for your children. So the garage is going down.

Kids are playing in the garage, and one of them decides to walk out, right? And so if you don't have that laser line, the door can come down on them.

Or if someone is laying down there, it could come down on there and crush them and create severe injuries for a child or even death. And so this laser line is very important.

If you don't have them in your garage, I would highly suggest upgrading your opener, and new openers require these in order for it to work properly.

Now, one caveat that we have seen on inspections, which I do not recommend, is folks that do not like this laser at the base that reverses it, all right? It might be someone that does a lot of work in their garage, and they're in and out.

And whatever reason they may have, they will align the openers together. Now, remember, they come, they're wired to the opener, and you put them at the base of the garage door tracks about 6 inches high.

That's the ideal location for them. But some folks will take them and they'll put them. Actually put them up on the ceiling facing each other. All right?

So you still have the two devices facing each other. And so the garage door opener senses that everything's okay, but they're up on the ceiling, all right?

And obviously that's not the appropriate installation of those. The garage door will still work, but you've lost your safety feature with those laser eyes.

Another thing we have seen is where they put the sensors up too high. I mentioned previously, 6 inches is the recommended height for those. We've seen them. 18 inches, 2ft.

And the reason you want them at about 6 inches is that generally is going to cover just about anything that might run through there that's really low to the ground.

You think of different pets, really small dogs or dogs that are low to the ground that could go under something that's even maybe a foot high and not trip that sensor. And so we want Those things about 6 inches I really don't think you're going to have much that's going to get under there.

Maybe a mouse, and that's okay if a mouse gets squashed into there. But you want those lasers on the garage door track facing each other about 6 inches high. That'd be my recommendation for that.

So on your garage door, just to review, you're checking for any unusual noises, you're checking for any vibration, you're checking for squeals. That would be the wheels going up and down the track, most likely.

Sometimes garage doors are installed or it's come to a point where they kind of go up part way and then they'll kind of snap and keep going. This usually occurs when the door has been damaged at one time, and we'll touch on that just a little bit.

But you're looking for any of those noises, and then you're also checking for that.

Those lasers at the base of your garage door, to make sure those are in place and make sure they're functional, all you need to do is you hit the button, you walk over in front of the door, you just put your foot in front of where that line would be, and it should reverse.

If that doesn't happen, you need to call a garage mechanic, garage door install and garage door installation company, something like that, and get someone to come out and fix that for you so you have that safety feature installed correctly and working. Another thing we look for on garage doors is the safety release handle.

Every garage door has a little arm up there, and it should have a rope coming down and usually a little plastic handle on the bottom of that. Now, modern garage doors, this is required to be a red. Red rope or string, more than a string.

It's thicker than a string, but it's kind of a thin rope and a red handle. Red is just so you can see it better and it indicates safety. And the reason you have this is a couple of reasons.

Right when you pull on this handle, it releases the fulcrum arm from the overhead door track. And that means you can manually operate the door. And so let's say you wake up one morning, you go out to.

You go to work, and the power's off, or, you know, the outlet going that that opener is plugged into is no longer functional. Well, how do you get to work? Well, you release that handle, lift the door up manually, get out, put the door back down. That's the purpose of it.

That's one purpose of it.

But more importantly is if for some reason the door would come down on somebody with the help of the opener that's going to kind of lock it right there. And so this opener is safe to release.

Handle is a way you can release that and safely lift that door up off of somebody so that they don't have a problem with that. It's also likely sometime along the way, your vehicle might be involved.

We've seen many doors that have been damaged, obviously by coming down on something. And you can notice that because you'll see a little crinkle in the bottom or the first two panels.

And that's usually it came down on a car or somebody backed into it. Normally it's. It's come down on something. But regardless, that will affect the operation of it if it's too severe.

And you want to keep an eye on that. Now, another big aspects of garage doors and safety is the spring. A couple of different kind of springs. You have the torsion spring over the top.

That's the most common, where it's wound to a certain rigidity, and it will allow the door to go up with just a little bit of assistance and keep it there. If you lift your door up and you let go and it slams back down that door, that spring is not set right.

And you need to call a garage door installation company to correct that. Those springs can be very dangerous. I would not recommend doing it yourself. It's something that a professional should do.

Another kind of spring that we'll see from time to time is kind of the more standard springs that kind of just stretch and they're going to be on the sides. And those are usually in older doors, but we still see them around now and then.

And one key feature of those, number one, you want to look for any stretched parts of the springs. It looks like they might be ready to snap. And another key feature is there should be a safety cable running through the center of it.

So this is your spring. If you're looking at your spring from the end, you see the opening.

There should be a cable going through that so that if the spring does break, that retention cable will keep it in place and it won't fly off and hurt somebody. There have been stories out there of folks when the garage door spring breaks, it flies off and hits somebody. It can cause injury.

It can cause death depending where you hit it because it's under very high tension. So the springs are a very important part of the door.

Make sure when you lift the door up manually and you let go, it should not come slamming back down. There might be a little bit of play. It might Come down just a little bit, depending on what. Everything's angled.

But you want to make sure that those springs are working right. One, it helps you lift the door. It's just a. An assist.

And two, if you ever have to lift the door up, especially if you have one of those garage door, that's a double wide door and it's wooden, those are very heavy. Without that spring assist, it's not usual for one person to be able to lift the door at all.

And so you want to make sure that those springs are there to assist you in that. So let's turn our eyes off of the doors for a little bit. Another garage safety issue is the firewall or draft stop.

And this is something that's misunderstood. Different locations have different requirements and so forth. Home inspectors don't necessarily look at the specific code requirements for a location.

It's more just the general safety of it. So let's just summarize this. The house between the garage. Excuse me.

The wall between the house and the garage should be a fire barrier between the two. All right. And this can be done one of two ways.

Number one, the barrier can call it the marriage wall, has to go all the way up to the rafters, all the way up the garage wall up to the rafters. Sealed all the way. All right. Generally with drywall tape and mudding, some jurisdictions will require a certain thickness of drywall.

Some will require a double thickness of drywall. Regardless, something needs to be there. That's one way to do it. The other way is to drywall the marriage wall and the ceiling of the garage.

This is usually what's done that's easier to do. It also helps the garage to look better. That way.

You can insulate the garage if you have that ceiling, but you want to have that drywall so that if a fire starts in the garage, you have a barrier between the house and the garage. Now, if the fire is too extreme, if it's let go too long, it eventually will get to the house anyhow.

But this is designed to be a barrier to help prevent the spread of the fire. Only about 2% of house fires actually start in the garage.

But the ones that do start in the garage because of toxic chemicals out there, because you typically don't see it happening until it's big, they cause the most damage. And so you want this fire barrier between the house and the garage. And that's something your home inspector will point out.

We're going to point out if there's voids in it.

Maybe you have a fire barrier, but some of it's been damaged, or somebody drilled through it, or somebody put ductwork through it, or a dryer vent comes out through it. All those things are incorrect. Now, along with the fire door is wall. You need a fire door. A fire door needs to be one hour rated for fire spread.

And there's various ways you could do this. Some wooden doors that are solid core meet this requirement.

But most of the time you're going to see a steel door that is designed for that garage and house wall.

The other thing with that door that some jurisdictions require, home inspectors don't normally point this out, but it is an upgrade, would be an automatic closer. So you, you walk in, maybe you got groceries or something, you can't shut the door. This is a closer that would just automatically close it.

You'll see those mostly in commercial properties, but that's one way to improve that safety. So the firewall, just to summarize, should be drywall. Various thicknesses are used. There shouldn't be any voids in it. The seams should be tight.

So you don't have any drafting available either of hazardous chemicals or fumes.

There should be typically taped, mudded, and you don't have to paint it, but you need to have those other two things so that you don't have any drafts or voids in it. And then of course, you need a fire door.

So as we think of garage and we think what we, what comes into it, some of the more modern houses that were built quickly, the garages aren't very big. You don't have a lot of room on either side for the cars for their doors to open and things like that.

And it's very important to have the garage organized. One thing that we've done in the past personally is when we run out of room on the sides or the ends, we build overhead storage compartments.

And you can buy these, you can build these, but it's a good way to get things up off the floor, especially lightweight items. It's good for storage and it just keeps things from around your car, so it's easy to get in and easy to get out around your vehicles.

So that's not necessarily safety for you, but it's more safety for the vehicle. You don't want your vehicle running into things. You don't want you to open your doors and break in, you know, dent it with something.

So make sure you have things stored properly and that you, you take care to not run into anything and damage the vehicle because that's quite expensive to fix. One One thing you don't think about necessarily with regard to garage safety, but carbon monoxide and ventilation.

Now, especially on a slab property where the mechanical items are in a garage, frequently it's required to have natural ventilation into that garage. Usually you'll see it up by the. The big overhead door. On the sides.

You'll see just like a little louvered vent that allows air in, and that's for makeup air. Because you have mechanicals in there. You might have your garage furnace or your house furnace in there.

You probably have your water heater in there, and those are drawing air. They need air to burn properly. So they're not putting the house under negative pressure, and so they're working properly.

So carbon monoxide is a risk. If the especially that garage area is put under negative pressure, the byproducts of combustion are going up the flue.

If you have negative pressure in that garage, it can come back out, and then you have potential carbon monoxide in the garage. So a couple of things. With carbon monoxide, if you're going to start your vehicle and warm it up, make sure the overhead garage door is open.

I would even go so far as to say back your car out a little bit, so the tailpipe is outside the front plane of the garage door. If you're going to let it run and heat it up, never start your car in the garage, even if it's for two minutes to let it warm up.

Your car will be pumping out a ton of carbon monoxide in two minutes, and that's going to inevitably seep into the house just a little bit and potentially cause health problems.

Carbon monoxide in high quantities can be deadly quickly, but even low quantities builds up in your bloodstream and can lead to headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, just a variety of medical conditions that, that are associated with carbon monoxide. Another safety thing to look for in your garage is any kind of ductwork terminating at the marriage wall.

We talked about the importance of the marriage wall earlier and why it should be sealed. And some things that break that seal are dryer vents and H vac vents. Frequently people want a heated garage. I understand.

I have a heated garage, too, but that's not the way to do it. And here's why.

If you have ductwork coming into the garage and terminating when that's not in use, and your house gets put under negative pressure, which can happen when you have exhaust fans running in the house, general atmospheric conditions, whatever you can be drawing through that ductwork, the fumes from the garage back into the house and Obviously, that's not what you want. Now, most fumes, like gasoline fumes and things like that, they tend to settle about 18 inches and down on the garage floor.

That's why it's recommended when you have a garage house door that you have a couple of steps up to it, because it's not as likely for the natural flow to go back into the house. However, that doesn't always happen, depending how architects design them and so forth.

So just make sure the ductwork is sealed off and any dryer vents go outside. Any other openings, we've seen folks that they create room for their microwave and their microwave exhausts into the garage.

That's never a good idea as well. So just a couple of more things to think about with that marriage wall and safety.

So we've talked about the door, we've talked about child and pet safety. We've talked about all those things, the big things with regard to your garage and the safety features involved.

Another thing that you might consider for your garage is think about how many steps that you have going up to the garage door. And do you need a handrail? Maybe you're in your 20s and 30s and you can navigate any stairs anywhere with no handrails. You have great balance.

But think of guests that might come over, parents, grandparents that might need a little assistance going up and down stairs. So just a little thing to think about as you are doing that.

Another, another, smaller item, but frequently you're going to be hanging tools in the garage.

And make sure when you open that garage door that the heavier tools like rakes and shovels are not subject to a wind gust that might knock them off, smack them against your car, and really leave you with a bad day. Right. So think of fasteners that will secure things to the wall.

Because when you open that garage door, depending how it's angled or the prevailing wind, is the weather that day, you're going to have a potential for a big gust coming in, and that will create headaches that you just don't want.

So some of the things we're looking for on an inspection, the garage door, the springs, the safety cable, the operation if the door itself is damaged.

You also a side thing that's not really a safety issue, but the sealant at the bottom of the door and on the sides, the weather stripping, make sure it's in good shape so you're not letting in any more critters than you have to. We're looking for the marriage wall that's under the safety features. We want to have that Thing drywalled and.

And taped and drywalled, mudded and a good door as well. So those are probably the most common things we see in a garage that would lead to safety problems. There's other things as well.

One thing that comes up from time to time, again, especially on slab homes. In other words, you don't have a basement or a big crawl space.

So you'll have the furnace and the water heater in your garage and you have gas lines leading to these. And so you pull in your garage and now the only thing between the gas lines and the front of your car is your common sense and your reactions.

All right, you know to stop if you're not distracted. What about if you go to press the brake and you accidentally. It slips off or your foot's on the brake, it slips off or you hit the gas.

Now your car lurches forward, hits the gas line and boom. Right. Potential damage, gas leakage at the very least. And so we suggest, strongly suggest in a garage to put what's called a bollard.

You've seen them in front of big box stores. They're basically a big pillar. Could be concrete, could be steel that you put in front of something. So vehicles cannot go past that.

Not a terrible idea to put these in your garage. You can get steel ones, you can bolt them to the floor.

Worst case scenario, that's going to stop your car from going into the gas line, into the furnace, into the water heater and creating a humongous challenge. There's always that time you're distracted. That's.

There's always that time someone borrows the car, maybe a teenager just learning to drive, whatever that you could have that happen. So a bollard, it could even be. You've seen those in parking lots, a curb stop almost similar to a gigantic speed bump. Right.

At least when your tires hit against it, you know you've gone as far as you need to go.

We've also seen, and this is maybe doesn't help safety wise, but it maybe is at least a reminder is folks that will hang like a tennis ball from the ceiling. If you're questioning where, how far forward to pull. You know, in smaller garages, you. You don't have a ton of room on each end of the car.

And so this ball is set at a certain location. Maybe it hits your front bumper or the windshield, you know, oop, that's far enough.

Now that won't stop you if your foot slips off the brake and goes on the gas. But it is a good reminder and better than nothing.

So take some of these ideas, implement it into your garage Safety really one thing we didn't discuss too much, but chemicals. How to store them. Put them in approved containers, keep them in their original containers and store them high. Store them away from children.

Store them away from where there would be a flame source. If you have a furnace and a water heater in a garage, one or the other or both, put them far away from that.

We don't want any of the chemicals around the pilot light on one of those appliances that could create fires and we don't want that. So put lids on them, keeping them safety, safety.

Design containers, label them, keep them out of the reach of children and that'll help your garage safety go a long way. Thanks for listening today.

Please call us if you have any questions about the safety of your garage and suggestions for improvements or any contacts you might need to go get a hold of for repairs. Thank you for listening.

This week you can catch up on the latest episode of the Thoughts from the Crawl Space podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. For more information about Gold Key Inspection services, go to goldkeyinspect.com.