Posted on 03/03/2006 2:34:34 PM PST by freeangel
I was burglarized this afternnon and the officer couldn't determine how they got in. The garage door was open when I got here, but hubby is sure he closed it when he left. Are radiofrequncy garage door thingies used much? Not quite sure what to post here, but I guess I'm just looking for information.
That Sucks,Sorry
What year was your garage door opener installed?
Some older garage door openers can be activated by any number of remotes
Burglers stick a hanger wire inbetween the top of the door and frame, hook the rope, and disenage the door opener's drive.
Voila! They are in.
I now tie the rope up so it can't be hooked unless I want it hooked.
I am sorry for your situation.
"I'm thinking it was installed about 5 years ago. Why would that make a difference?
Most garage door openers installed in the last 8 years or so have a "rolling code"... meaning that the frequency of the signal that opens the door changes everytime you open the door. The old models had little dipswitches that you set and the frequency stayed the same until you manually changed it. The newer openers are much more difficult to "hack" into the frequencies.
Having worked with many garage door openers, there is a very good chance that your openers code was stolen. If your opener is older than 2 years. The newest generation of opener is the only one that the criminals have not broken yet, to the best of my knowledge and they came out about 2 years ago. The criminals are getting a lot better at it also. With the increase in the ability of code cracking software to run at much faster speeds even the million roaming code openers are prone to being hacked. The best advise I can give is to get a new liftmaster opener that is a 3000 model number (3220, 3255, 3280, etc. ) Other than that, the crooks just drive around neighborhoods and let the code cracker work, if a door opens that becomes the target. The newer ones have vacation lockouts and override switches but those don't help on a daily basis. Sorry to hear about your loss.
Does it have an electric eye? One that stops it from closing if something breaks the beam?
If so, it is possible that an animal ran across as it was shutting and it went back up and was open all day for anyone to walk right into or someone was waiting near the door but out of site when your husband left for work.
The best thing to do is watch it close all the way before leaving your driveway.
Another thing that can break the beam, is something sitting near the beam path that gets blown or shifted into the beams path. It could be leaves blow in to the garage or a spiderweb near it that blew into the path of the beam and so on.
If the system is only 5 years old, then it most likely has the safety beam feature.
Thank you for that info. We'll be looking.
It does have an electric eye. But my new neighbor was burglarized last month which makes me suspicious. He also came home to an open garage door. As you can guess I was out canvassing the neighborhood last night since the police seem to have very little interest in this matter. As it turns out, after he was burglarized, he had a monitoring system put on the outside of his house. He may have pictures of vehicles in the neighborhood yesterday that "didn't belong".
Do you have a dog door? I've been able to get through a dog door to get into my house. I even raised the door thing from the outside. It's pretty disturbing and we'll probably fix it soon.
No dog door. But I do have a very friendly mutt that is kept in the den/kitchen part of the house while we are out. I am presuming this is what kept the burglars out of that part of the house. She can bark pretty well.
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