Left garage open all night, could something have gotten in? (scorpions, codes)

[hoffdano]

Just want to add to the OP's rather silly paranoia. The kind of creatures that could be in your garage:

Rats/Mice
Possum
Skunk
Snakes
Lizards
Tarantulas
Scorpions
Cats
Ringtail
Raccoon
Squirrels
Birds

Any and all of these creatures can be found around here. Some like pet food.

My guess is that the garage door was opened unintentionally before you went to bed. If an electric opener activated at 2 a.m. I would hear it. Most newer garage doors have "rolling" security codes and are nearly immune to stray signals. If yours has a hard coded key - might want to change it.

[COCUE]

Hoffdano - not nice feeding into my paranoia albeit rather silly. :-( now I can go imagining.

CptnRn - thanks. How did you change your frequency. Hubby is going to try to figure it out how to change. I can't change it, just have to make sure it's always locked, I checked twice yesterday before bed.

Capcat, ScoPro, Mark- wasn't really worried about an intruder, ok maybe for 5 seconds because the connecting door is always locked and we double check before bed as our toddler likes to turn the lock open but can open the door. I also don't think anyone even came to the garage as there were a lot of easily "grabbable" items

Idlewile - good to know that snakes can come in and be more vigilant

[RooCeleste]

Interesting that you posted this, because I have started going walking very early in the morning and yesterday morning, I noticed about 5:30 am that the garage door at one of our neighbors in Walsh Trails (just across BC Lake/the trail from Avery Ranch) was open. The house and garage were dark, so it didn't appear that anyone was outside working. I didn't know them, otherwise I would have rung the doorbell or called them. Just struck me as odd, considering the early morning hour on a Sunday.

A few months ago, there was quite the discussion in our neighborhood Facebook group about people's garage doors opening spontaneously, even when the homeowners knew they had closed them. The possibly of the same frequency was blamed on some of them.

[Trainwreck20]

Just as an FYI, we got a new garage door opener a few years back, and it has a level sensor that transmits to a receiver in the house. It indicates whether the door is open or closed. I think you could easily get them aftermarket very cheap. My wife loves them - she is the typical 'did I leave the iron on? We have to go back!' . It would be nice (and is probably out there as well) to have an app that told you if your garage door is open - it is easy to drive away while it is going down and miss the fact that it reversed and went up at the last second.

[mark311]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

It would be nice (and is probably out there as well) to have an app that told you if your garage door is open - it is easy to drive away while it is going down and miss the fact that it reversed and went up at the last second.

Yes, I've been toying with the idea of upgrading my perfectly working garage door opener so I could get smartphone functionality. Craftsman had this for a while and it looks like Chamberlain added it now as well.

Smartphone Garage Door Opener Products | Chamberlain Do-It-Yourself Products

Craftsman

[Trainwreck20]

upgrading my perfectly working garage door opener

There should be an after-market add-on that should work fine for telling if it is open or closed. Now, making it open and close remotely, yes, that would most likely have to be a new opener....

[mark311]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

There should be an after-market add-on that should work fine for telling if it is open or closed. Now, making it open and close remotely, yes, that would most likely have to be a new opener....

Yeah, it works perfectly, but it's an 8 year old Genie chain-drive opener. I was spoiled in my old house with a Chamberlain whisper-drive (belt driven) system that was ultra quiet. The universal add-on for this feature runs $129 from Chamberlain on amazon and it does enable remote opening/closing over the Internet. Tempting, but I'd rather go with an upgraded belt-drive system again if I'm going to put any work into it.

Chamberlain MYQ-G0201 MyQ-Garage Controls Your Garage Door Opener with Your Smartphone - Amazon.com

[general101]

Cocue, it is quite possible that garage doors might have a frequency that overlaps with a neighbor and this might cause random opening/closing of your door when they use their remote. I have seen that happen for a neighbor and required the installer company to come in and change the settings. But this is usually for new communities/houses. If you bought an existing house in an established neighborhood, such issues should have been discovered and fixed long back. So, I suspect you just forgot to close the garage door though you might think that you really closed it. Also the remotes are very sensitive. I have had it in my pocket while going for walks and have noticed that it accidentally opens the door even though I did not intend too. If you happen to have it in your handbag or somewhere in the house (instead of your car), that can be a possibility too.

As long as you had the door from garage to your house closed, you should be fine. If you are still very concerned, just take stuff off from your garage and rearrange it a bit to make sure there is nothing hidden. It might be a good idea to get some help from your pest control guy to do some quick checks and get him to do a good treatment inside the garage (and this will take care of bugs etc) though they are not going to help you move stuff in and out.

Also if you really had the garage door open through an entire day from the previous evening, I would think one of your neighbors should have warned you. So put in a word with them to inform you in future if they notice anything like this.

[COCUE]

Celeste - yeah, I can see that as looking odd. As far as I can see everyone on my street has their garage door closed except a few times when you see the kids playing out there.

Mark / trainwreck -Thanks all, so many ideas to investigate.. I'm just forwarding these to hubby. I do like the idea of an app telling you that your garage door is open or perhaps a remote door closer or something.

General - guess anything is possible, especially with getting kids in and out of the car/ house. I think we need to call pest control anyway as per other advice on here to just do a quick check up. We've only been here for about 3 weeks so not sure if the neighbors know us enough to feel like our garage being wide open for over 24 hours is normal but I have mentioned it to the guy next door and he mentioned resetting the pin / password etc. will mention to the others as I see them. They have been very friendly.

[G Grasshopper]

Just a thought: today, after pulling into the garage and hitting the "close" switch on the garage door just as I was walking into the house, I just happened to notice that it didn't sound right. Turned around and noticed that the safety mechanism on the door had sent it back up. Upon checking, it turned out that a leaf that was hanging by a spider web, dangling from the bottom of the garage door, and the safety system had interpreted this as something in the way of closure. I had a similar problem last summer, when my sweeping of the garage floor happened to misalign one of the sensors, so it would not close at all (alarmed) because it thought there was always something in the way. All I had to do was realign the beam. Some safety systems are sensitive, and will re-open the door if tripped. Its always good to look to make sure the door actually did close.