Electric Garage Door- how secure?

[WorriedNowEek]

Just completed on my first home.
I collected the keys yesterday (still in rented, so not moving straight in) and went to the property.
All locked, no issues. I only entered the house, not the garage.

Partner drives down today, garage door is wide open!

I've never had an electric garage door. Can this happen?
Are the fobs sensitive enough it could have triggered in my bag as I walked away?
I certainly didn't hear anything.

Are electric doors (no physical lock or handle) generally secure or easy to force open?

Seriously concerned about storing stuff in there now!

Yes they can easily be pressed in your bag or pocket, we have done it a few times and not realised.

They are not that secure i think i could lever ours up with a shovel/ bar easily enough to be able to crawl under. ( roller door )

Thanks @Diyextension , but oh gosh 🤦‍♀️
That's not great at all. Didn't even think about how secure it was when we were looking.

We might have to see if we can add some additional security to it.
We will want to keep quite a few things in there.

You can get remotes that have a cover that slides over the buttons so they can’t accidentally be pressed.

another option is to have a keypad or key operated lock on the outside and use that instead of the remote?

we have a side door on our garage and use that to go in and just leave the remote in the car so it can be opened when we get home in the car.

there are buttons in the garage to open /close the door after its parked up.

If you have valuable items in there chain them down and get a decent alarm fitted,the flashing box on the outside is the best deterrent.

We will have to make a plan once we are there properly.

I think not very.

If you want to have it as a remote opening door then it is always very vunerable to being forced.

If you are not interested in opening on a regular basis or remotely, you can attach bolts to the inside to stop it moving or tie them down to wall mounted eye bolts and also disconnect the power. If it is attached and moves by a carraige on a rail you can also block the movement of the carraige along the rail with something like a g clamp (remember of course to take this off if powering the door), so no one can possibly force the door up and down from the outside.There are also a range of security devices available on amazon.

Bear in mind that once someone is inside the garage, if the door is integral the only thing that might be blocking them gaining entrance to the house is the interior door, and new builds don't have a great reputation in terms of fitting high security doors here. Normally it will the the cheapest firedoor available with a very simple lock.

I guess the good news is that most people don't really need them to store cars in (a lot of them aren#t big enough anyway) and put them up and down on a regular basis. So fitting some sort of additional security restraint is no big deal. I leave mine permanently locked off, but I can open it in a couple of minutes if I want.

Thanks @GasPanic
At the moment there's no access from the garage to the house, however our plan had been to see if we can create a door was as the fridge freezer needs to be in there.
We will have to have an external lock or something till we get ourselves turned round and find people to do the jobs, get quotes etc.

Just not what we had expected to add to the ever list of growing jobs...on a house we thought just needed a lick of paint and some new carpets when we could afford it!

The electronics are also not necessarily very reliable. Ours opens and closes at random. We are getting rid of it.

We added a wireless converter to ours so that it is app controlled. That has the added bonus of telling us that the foot is being opened and closed.

Have you found out how much it costs to get rid of it?

Our mechanism is obsolete now (20 years old), so might be easier to get rid than pay £750 to replace.

Long term we had hoped to convert to a real room, but that's a long way off.

Was that easy to do?

We are clueless and feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the extra stuff to do.

I think it was quite easy. I’m sure it was an Amazon purchase. Plugs in with the door control panel and works over the WiFi via apple home.

It depends on the door. They are generally more secure than wooden, or metal up and over. No handles, no keys, anti-lift etc.

Check what make it is. You definitely can't get through ours, but yes, I suppose you could press the button by mistake.

We're turning it into a new room instead of a garage, so we're getting rid of it as part of that.

We hope to do this, but it will be a long term goal.
First time buyer, so now we need to start saving again for the big jobs!

I recently moved into a house with an electric garage door. It's a late 60s build, with a garage to fit a 60s size car, so we're not using it for parking and it's just for storage.
The fobs are stored in a drawer in the kitchen, so not being carried around. I open the garage door about once a month. The rest of the time I access it via a door out in the garden.
Loads of people have electric doors these days, and I've never heard of any spats of break-ins. I think it's fine.
Just maybe don't keep anything of great value in there.

If there is no access to the house you do not really have to worry, so long as you don't put anything valuable in there of course.

If you cannot lock from the inside you have to pretty much put up with whatever security the door has, unless you install one of those outside garage defender things.

You will probably find knocking through for a door a pain because it has to be a fire door and also I think a raised doorstep but you will find more about that on the web.

There would definitely be a raised step needed now I've seen the garage empty.
The hall is not as long as I remembered either, and there's a plug socket in the way. Everything is looking more difficult than we thought.

We were hoping for it to be our lego room @zingally and it needs the fridge freezer to be in there too.
The actual house is so small I don't know where we will put stuff if we don't use the garage.

Plug socket relocation should not be a major issue. Not in comparison to knocking a doorway out of a block wall and framing it.

You probably need to get creative in the use of space. Shelves can store a lot and you can put them in high places that are out of the way. Also good to keep model displays away from young hands.

Most new builds have an understairs gap that is plasterboarded up that can be made into a useful cupboard without much effort. I have just opened mine up.

Finally there is the loft space. Get it boarded over and a loft ladder installed. My house is relatively small but has a huge loft. You can store a ton of stuff in there.

You can think about getting racking for the garage which allows for storage of loads of stuff warehouse style and is not too expensive.

The house is an old new build from 1980's, so the space under the stairs is done and the loft is boarded. Not been up there yet, but pictures from the survey we had done make it look like it's not possible to stand there.

We will make it work. Just feels like we have paid a fortune for a shoe box, now we need more jobs doing.

I'm from the North East, but bought in London. I'm still struggling with the cost v size differences!