When the door will not come down
When a door stops short, reverses at the floor or will not come down at all, a visit looks at the safety sensors, the opener's travel limits and whatever is riding in the track. A door that will not come down is the service page for the stop-and-reverse symptom, and an opener that reverses at the floor covers the opener side of the same question. If the door has slipped out of its guides, a door that has slipped its track is its own job.
If the door has to sit up in the tracks until a technician gets to the house, stay out from under the door and let the car sit where it is. For a door that will not come down, tell us on the call what the opener is doing, whether the inside door locks and latches, and whether anything in the opening would be in the way of a technician working at the frame.
Northbrook homes by the numbers
Northbrook leans heavily on detached, owner-occupied housing. About 67 percent of its housing units are single family detached homes and about 11 percent are single family attached homes such as townhomes, while about 19 percent are in buildings with five or more units; about 87 percent of occupied homes are owner occupied.2
The median year built for housing units is 1976, and the 1970s are the biggest building decade: 3,057 of its 14,435 housing units, about 21 percent, were built from 1970 to 1979, with another 2,779 from the 1960s.3
Garages behind 1960s and 1970s houses
A door and opener from either decade have had decades under them, and the parts a visit looks at show the wear.
Doors from that era may be steel sectional sets on torsion hardware, though some older garages still carry extension springs with safety cables alongside the lift cables. The balance of a door is the technician's test.
The village's contractor rules
The Village of Northbrook contractor license covers general contractors, and homeowners acting as general contractor who do not live at the residence undergoing construction, and the license is good for one year from its application date.4 The one-year window runs from the application date rather than to a calendar deadline.
License exemptions sit on the same page. A Village contractor license is not required for HVAC, Fire Protection, Fence or Sign contractors.4
A list of registered companies sits beside the registration rules. The village publishes a list of contractors currently licensed with the village.4
Any change of contractor that takes place following permit issuance must be completed before the new contractor starts any work, and the village says failing to do so is a violation of the municipal code.4
Permits in Northbrook
The village's single-unit permits run from the structural end to the cosmetic. Its list of single unit residential permit types includes fire or accident repair, which the village describes as rebuilding after fire or accident damage; exterior alteration, a change to the exterior or roof of an existing residence; and a driveway application for the removal and replacement, reconfiguration or new installation of a driveway. The village asks homeowners to contact its Development and Planning Services Department to inquire about whether a project needs a permit or for questions regarding these permit types.5 Garage doors are not named on the list, so the village is the office to ask about a specific overhead door job.
The village requires a permit towards the removal and replacement or new installation of a single-unit or individual multi-unit residential driveway, patio, service walk or stoop.6 Driveway work is not ours. For everyday garage door security habits, the guide covers what to do around a working door between visits.
The inside entry door in Northbrook
Northbrook's typical construction notes for fire and accident repair say that if the door into the garage is being replaced it must meet the code: no opening from a garage straight into a bedroom, and other doors between the garage and the house must be solid wood or solid or honeycomb core steel at least 1 3/8 inches thick, or 20 minute fire rated, with a self closing device.7 Those code requirements are for the inside entry door from the garage, not the overhead door.
The same construction notes list the 2018 International Residential Code and the 2017 National Electrical Code, each with Northbrook amendments, and the 2018 Illinois Energy Conservation Code among the codes that apply.7
Building a detached garage in Northbrook
Northbrook's detached garage permit asks for a contractor of record and a sealed plat of survey drawn to scale, and its required inspections include the foundation, footing or slab before the pour, electrical rough-in, framing, the driveway where there is one, and a final inspection.8
Address numbers and the garage door
Northbrook's advice on marking an address is to use numbers rather than letters, preferably 5 inches or larger, to put them above the garage door rather than on it, to make sure they are easy to see from the street, and to use reflective numbers if possible.9
Northbrook allows construction noise from 7am to 7pm Monday through Friday and 9am to 5pm on Saturday, and allows no construction noise on Sunday.10