Clowns to the Left of Me; Jokers to the Right...

...Here I am stuck in the garage with you.  ...Here I am stuck in the garage with you.

 



I know I have written lots of crazy blogs. This may be one of the craziest. And of course, it's all true, which makes it even more crazy.

 It was your average ordinary Monday. My husband and I had to run to the post office to pick up a package that was too big to fit in our mailbox as well as make a quick stop to CVS. As usual, we went out to the garage, clicked the button on the wall of garage bay number 3 (it's the 3 car garage attached to the house; not to be confused with the detached garage on the other side of the house which we rarely use...so many garages!  Why?) which opened the garage door, got in the car and ran our errands. It didn't take us long and when we got back, my husband clicks the remote, the garage door opened, and we pulled in. We got our stuff out of the car, and we close the garage door using the button on the side of the wall. So far a typical boring day, right? So far so good 

 But as you can tell by the title of this blog post it doesn't stay that way. 

 We haven't had much rain, so I was happy when we got some on Monday afternoon. But then it started to pour; I mean REALLYY come down. Again, I don't mind that, but I knew that I would have to drive back to New Jersey at the end of the workday. No one wants to drive through all of that!  However I wouldn't have much choice. You can't change the weather. 

  I was pretty happy that when I finally got to pack up the car to see that the rain seemed to be settling down. I loaded all of my stuff in the car.  My husband hit the button on the side of the garage to open the garage door. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

 Now the lights in the garage were on. We had turned them on when we came in. But the garage door was not opening. I know there must be some way to open the door manually, but neither of us were exactly sure how.  (And there was a manual in the garage which MUST tell you how to do it, but it's mostly about installing the unit.  Somewhere in there are instructions, but I'll need to dig deeper...which I don't think you should have to.

 My husband then went to check the two other garage doors. Neither one of them would work either. What to do?   He checked the breakers in the garage.  All good.  He went down to the basement to check the breakers there.  Still nothing.

 He tried to reach the garage door opener motor/mechanism on the ceiling of the garage but could not reach it with a step ladder.   He was going to try to climb on the car, but that didn't seem like such a good idea. So, he had me open the moon roof of the car. Then he got in the passenger side and pushed himself up through the open moon roof.  (This would not be easy for any size person; even my skinny as a bean pole son.)  He unplugged the motor. Then he went to get a very long extension cord.

 He plugged the cord for the garage door opener motor into the extension cord and went to the next nearest outlet.  Nothing.  He tried another outlet.  Nothing.  He finally ran the extension cord all the way to the wall closest to the door to the house. This is quite a distance (three car bays long). Bingo! The light on the motor comes on. He pushes the button and the garage door opened. Hallelujah! 

 But what was the problem with the power in the garage? Specifically, the power to the garage door openers and to the motion detector camera that we have in the garage window.  None of which were working. 

 I didn't have time to figure it out as I had to head back to New Jersey, but my husband did.  Or thinks he did.  What he said (and this is mostly Greek to me):  I suspect one of the GFCI receptacles on the outside of the garage got wet.  GFCI tripped, but it's gotten old and won't reset.  It probably needs to be replaced.  (I kind of understand that...do you?)

 So, my favorite plumbing heating air company will be coming out sometime soon because they also do electrical work. Hopefully they will be able to replace what needs to be replaced How much is it going to cost? God only knows. But at least I'm not stuck in the garage anymore with my car.  (Although most days there are clowns to the left of me and jokers to the right...but I can't do anything about that.)

 



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