gerisullivan | Putting my thinking cap on

A couple of months ago, my remote garage door clicker stopped working. It had been temperamental for a couple of years; something with the push button finally gave up the ghost.

The door opener itself still works fine using the clicker mounted inside the garage. It's the clicker I keep in the car that went kaput. It's an old model, with dip switches and ancient-looking remotes. I heard about universal remotes, but was dubious they'd work with my opener. I did a bit of a spot check online; tonight's further research suggests I should have looked more in the first place.

So far, it's only been an annoyance to open the door from the wall clicker, back the car out of the garage, then go back in, close the door, and exit through the mudroom door...then repeat the process in reverse upon returning home. But winter's coming.

My dual-purpose solution has been sitting around not getting done for most of a month. The garage needs cleaning. I could clean the garage, moving all of the stored items over to the current parking area, then park on the left side of the garage through the winter. The 2-car garage has two doors; the left clicker works just fine. Something about being used less than once a year, probably. Hard to wear out the button that way.

The garage still needs cleaning. Time's running out on that front, especially warm weather time. There are other reasons I'd rather keep parking on the right. I casually thought of having a new opener installed, or at least checking further into the possibility of a replacement clicker.

DUH

I finally managed to put two and two together. The left clicker works just fine PLUS dip switches meant all I needed to do was to set the dip switches on the left door clicker to match those on the broken right door clicker. Sure enough, I now have a working right door clicker. I even set the switches on the broken clicker for the left door, so when I do get around to buying a universal remote that works with dip switches, I'll have the code to set it properly, without having to reset the switches up in the opener itself.

It was one of those mixed-blessing Girl Homeowner moments. Do I feel proud and happy for having solved the problem without spending a cent? Yes. Do I feel addle-brained for not thinking of this solution two months ago? Yes. So it goes.