OT: Smackin' the Garage Door with the car!

[Patrick Conroy]

"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in news:alice.1022$ [e-mail]:

Neat idea - appeals to my Rube Goldberg side of the brain.

[Robert Bonomi]

A lot depends on how much clearance you have between the garage door and car bumper when parked 'normally', And whether or not anybody _walks_ in that space -- assuming there is that kind of space.

There are not-terribly-expensive "high-tech" goodies that will help. they're designed to 'alert' if there's something _low_ behind you that you can't see. e.g. the kid left the tricycle parked in the drive.

Unfortunately, they do tend to go off if you're parallel parking in tight quarters, too,

Me, I'd be tempted to rig a photo-cell 'doorbell' trigger, across the garage, at some 'reasonable' distance away from the door opening. connected to a

*LOUD* klaxon, if that light-beam is broken _and_ the door is still down.

You could do something similar with a pressure sensor on the garage floor. (like the old service station 'dinger' air-hose.) this would be less prone to false-alarms.

Then, there is the *extreme* solution. Learn to _back_ the cars into the garage. It's _really_hard_ to hit the door that way.

[Robert Bonomi]

The same idea just hit me.

And it's really, *really* trivial to implement.

pulley on the wall above the top of the garage door. high enough to be above the door when the door is open.

2nd pulley on the ceiling about at mid-hood point of car, when parked.

Sign hung from a couple of pieces of rope, from ceiling, at eye-level of driver in car.

second piece of rope, running from top of garage door, through above- door pulley, to ceiling pulley, and down.

To calibrate, open garage door. pull 2nd rope taught, and with sign at about ceiling level, tie rope off to sign.

As garage door closes, sign descends. Until it reaches level that the fixed ropes limit it to. After that, the garage-door rope just goes slack.

Note: wire-core *clothes-line* is an _ideal_, inexpensive, material for this kind of construction. Although, with a cardboard sign, you could probably get by with something about the quality of binder twine.

[Patriarch]

Richard Cline wrote in news: [e-mail]:

My neighbor put something similar on his ugly new Chevy pickup truck (the Tupperware version.) An electronic female voice tells him whenever there is anything within 8 ft or so, calling out the distance. More than $25, though harder to ignore.

Patriarch

[Patriarch]

[e-mail] (Robert Bonomi) wrote in news: [e-mail]:

And so what message goes on the sign, that doesn't result in a frosty evening, or a call to the attorney? ;-)

"Hey, Dummy! Open the Door!" ?

[Charles Spitzer]

use the same pulley system to pull a 2x4 wheel chock out of the way when the door goes up. obwwr.

[no(SPAM)vasys]

If she can't see the closed garage door do you really think she'll see the sign? ;-)

[Larry Jaques]

On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 16:14:57 -0400, the inscrutable "no(SPAM)vasys" spake:

OR...

As she drives into the garage and the sign obscures her vision, she drives right through the other side of the garage. He can't win.

--== May The Angst Be With You! ==-- -Yoda, on a bad day --

Ending Your Web Page Angst.

[Robert Bonomi]

Maybe we should run a contest!

I could see: "Beware of Door!" "Let the sunshine in!" "Have you hugged your rear-view mirror today?" "Push the button, Max." "Psssst. there's something behind you." "Thimk!" "What have you forgotten today?" "Be sure opener is engaged, before putting motor in gear." "If you ignore this ...." "You break it, You buy it"

In fact, with only a little Rube Goldberg-ing, it should be possible to have a bunch of signs, that come down _in_rotation_.

[Robert Bonomi]

"No problemo" with that one. If the sign is down (the door has to be closed for that) where it obscured her vision, she *already* drove through the door. What's to worry about the other side of the garage?

Hey! there's _another_ possibility for the sign -- an Alfred E. Neumann grin.

[Robert Bonomi]

Getting the chock to go -back- into place when the door closes presents a wee bit of a problem. unless you've got a fleet of trained cockroaches, or something.

[CW]

[Patriarch]

"CW" wrote in news:o6Ace.1950$ [e-mail]:

Another neighbor has a tennis ball on a string, adjusted such that, when it just touches the windshield, the car is far enough in.

All of this is solved by storing and using sufficient quantity of woodworking tools in the garage, and leaving the cars outside, where they belong. Oh, and buying sufficently inexpensive automobiles...

Patriarch

[Mike Marlow]

D'OH!!! Well, because fixing two walls is harder than fixing one wall, silly! (Walks away with a valley girl look of dismay at how some people just don't seem to get it...)

[Larry Jaques]

On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:47:26 -0000, the inscrutable [e-mail] (Robert Bonomi) spake:

--sniperoo--

That's the one, in reverse lettering on the door precisely behind each of the 3 rear view mirrors, just in case she sometimes checks.

This one dangles from the rvm and will be wiggling when she sits down in the vehicle.

Along with this list: how many dinners out, shopping trips, and beauty shop visits she will miss to pay for the^H^H^HEACH broken door.

The only problem is that we're dealing with a person who didn't pay attention in the first place. It's hard to miss seeing a garage door.

--== May The Angst Be With You! ==-- -Yoda, on a bad day --

Ending Your Web Page Angst.

[Larry Jaques]

On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:59:55 -0500, the inscrutable Patriarch spake:

Dad used to have that one in play at out first Vista house. We put in a garage (contractor-built) while we turned the attached garage into a utility room, closet, and family room next to the pool. I just wish Dad had known more about woodworking.

Amen to that. (Since it's what I do now.)

--== May The Angst Be With You! ==-- -Yoda, on a bad day --

Ending Your Web Page Angst.

[Robert Bonomi]

This is also standard practice at most inter-city bus terminals, and has been for at least 30 years. Although they tend to use something about like sash-cord, rather than just string, and run it inside a section of

1/2" PVC pipe -- these are usually open bays, and that way the thing doesn't move in the wind very much.

[Brian Elfert]

A fire in the house and you're worried about getting the car out of the garage?

Brian Elfert

[Dave Hinz]

Seems reasonable to me...no reason to have a bigger loss than necessary.