On this episode of Ready Radio, guest host Bill Anderson sits in for John Rush and tackles an often-overlooked vulnerability in home preparedness: the garage door.
Joined by Chris Hummel of Hummel’s Overhead Garage Door, the conversation digs into why garages are one of the most common access points for break-ins—and why most homeowners underestimate the risk. From outdated openers and thin contractor-grade doors to worn-out springs that can fail when you need them most, this episode connects everyday home maintenance to real-world security and emergency readiness.
Listeners will learn how criminals exploit garages, including simple techniques like coat-hanger break-ins, and
SPEAKER 08 :
This is Ready Radio, preparing you to be ready for anything, now. Here’s your survival guide for Ready Radio, John Rush.
SPEAKER 06 :
And for John Rush today, he is away doing some other things, but don’t worry, you’re in good hands. We’ve got you taken care of today. So we have a guest, Chris Hummel, with us from Hummel’s Overhead Garage Doors. And you might be asking, what does this have to do with preparedness? Well, it actually has a lot to do with preparedness, and Chris is going to tell us all about that, and we’ll venture into that in today’s program. Chris, how are you doing?
SPEAKER 08 :
I’m doing good. Thanks for having me on the show. I’ve never been in this capacity before, so I’ll do my best.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, it’s fun. Don’t worry about it. It’s a good audience, and it’s great. Everybody is like-minded that listens to the show, so you’re in good hands. Well, tell us a little bit about yourself.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, my name is Chris Hummel. I live in Castle Rock. I’m married. I have a wife, and we’ve been married for 22 years. We have three children, and we moved to Castle Rock in 2020 from Illinois, and I opened this garage door business about a year ago. I would say that we’re a faith-forward business. We take our Christian faith very strongly in this family, and I do as a business owner. My employees have to meet and exemplify that standard on and off calls, meaning we’ll have discipleship group meetings at the front of the week, and then we’ll study the Bible, and then from there we try to take that servant attitude to our customers and display a very honest and open line of communication so that we can develop and move trust forward from there.
SPEAKER 06 :
Awesome. Yeah, that’s just really important, especially in today’s world with a lot of service providers. And unfortunately, a lot of service providers have gotten a bad reputation, almost like that car salesman, if you will, where they can’t trust you. And a lot of companies have also moved to a commission-based type structure, and they’re always trying to upsell you and you know, tell you that you’re, you know, if you don’t act on this now, your garage door is going to fall down tomorrow and give you all these doomsday kind of pictures there. I know in our electrical business and in our HVAC, that’s what we hear all the time from other customers. As far as people even say, hey, you better go check into a hotel tonight because your panel is going to burn up off the wall and, you know, just these scare tactics, which is not good, you know, and the purpose of this show is is Ready Radio, and we talk about being ready for the what-ifs of life, because, you know, as you know, with the study of the Scripture and stuff, you know, we’re not Times aren’t going to get any better. They’re going to become a little bit more complicated, if you will. And, you know, we’re not called to be scared of those things, but we are called to be ready and to be prepared and to be the watchman on the wall and to see these things and to know these things. And yeah, we’ve still got to live in the world as it continues to go sour. So I thought it would be a great topic to talk about you know, garage doors because, you know, garage doors could be a weak point in someone’s home as far as security-wise. Why would you think that, you know, garage doors is an important topic, you know, when we’re talking about, you know, readiness and things of that nature and security, you know, for one’s home, Chris?
SPEAKER 08 :
I mean, it’s a great question, I think, and it can be answered in a couple of ways. First and foremost, the garage typically is the biggest room associated with the house. And oftentimes, that room or that garage houses some of the most valuable assets that a homeowner can have. Not just a car, but tools. If you decide to keep your gun safe or anything in that garage, well, all of a sudden, that’s become a very valuable target to a criminal. And homeowners oftentimes overlook this fact. Criminals won’t. They realize that within that garage, there is something of value. And beyond that, a criminal, a seasoned criminal knows that in most cases, in the homes in the United States, the critical access point to the house, into the house, is through the garage. And so what does that mean? It means that if they can get into the garage, which is not hard in most cases, well, then that door from there in most scenarios will lead directly into the kitchen. So now you’ve removed an alley that a criminal has to walk down and you put them directly center mass into your kitchen. And again, now that tends to be another very valuable piece of the home. And while a homeowner is looking out the windows or guarding the front door in a worst case type scenario, um, what’s going on behind them. And, um, these are questions that need to be asked and should be addressed. And I think that there are some, some simple ways to go about that.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, I did a little bit of research just kind of, kind of seeing, you know, what’s the percentage of burglaries that happened through the garage. And nationally it’s about 9% of home burglaries happen to the garage, but in certain regions it goes all the way up to a third. a third of the entries, you know, come through the garage. And, you know, you made a really great point is, you know, if we leave that garage door open, it’s the biggest shopping window you will to the whole entire world because people drive by and they see what you got in there. And, you know, you got, shoot, these days you got electric bikes in there. You’ve got, you know, all your sports equipment. You’ve got maybe, you know, definitely your car. You’ve got, you know, tools in there. And if they can access that door and then close that door behind them, well, now they’ve got time. They’ve got, you know, a space, a secure area where they’re not going to hear noise necessarily to then, you know, access the door into the house to your point. That’s a valid point. I think a lot of people kind of take that for granted because, to your point, we’re so worried about the front door, the windows, which are important things, but we forget that big door that we have on the side of our house there. So that’s really great. Now, what about, because I’ve been watching some videos on YouTube and they’re talking about the Flipper device, and I don’t know if you know what the Flipper device is. It’s a It’s a Flipper Zero, and it’s a device that can, you know, learn a radio frequency or a rolling code or something like that, and you can replace it with your TV, your garage door opener. And, you know, there’s a lot of people out there that say, hey, you know, with the right technology, somebody could hack the code and now push the button and open your door. I mean, to me, that sounds just – to be honest, that sounds a little –
SPEAKER 08 :
advanced for most burglars but um is that a is that a thing is that a possibility it’s it is a possibility i mean if if you’re in a new uh a newer neighborhood that may not be as as much of a concern as a neighborhood that’s 15 years old or older um you know an immediate step is is for someone to on a recommendation is to just get a ladder out and then climb the back of the ladder look for the panel on the opener itself and there will be a date And if that garage door opener is 15 years or older, just know that that will be a very easy garage door opener to hack and to get beyond with a $50 tool that a criminal can have in their car. And these are accessible, and criminals know about them. Again, so it is certainly a concern. It’s a precautionary measure. Garage door opening. opener companies um the last five to ten years are very aware of that we install primarily lift master garage door openers for a number of reasons include including security They would come out with a new opener every three to four years. Right now they have a whole new line of them. And at the forefront is security. And it’s not just the rolling codes. Imagine you’re in your car, you’re in your vehicle, and you have either a remote programmed into the car itself or you have one of those clicker button remotes. Every time that signal is being sent from your car or from your remote opener to the actual installed opener, it’s a one and done signal. It’s an infinite number of ones and zeros. It’s then eradicated. And then even if someone, an advanced criminal, were hiding in the bushes, they could not repeat that signal again and break into your house. So it is certainly a mechanism. You know, there’s… It’s something to be aware of, for sure. I think that even before that, though, a listener should consider a couple of other things, too. You know, like, well, how old is my garage door? And I’m not trying to sell anyone a garage door here on your show. It’s just a question to ask. If your home was built in the last five to seven years, well, that’s going to be a five to seven-year-old contractor grade garage. garage door and it’s probably going to be a 27 or higher gauge steel, which means thinner metal. And at 27 gauges, you can cut through that with a butter knife. So, you know, and then also just know that, like, if my home was built in the last seven or eight years, those tracks are going to be a contractor-grade track. That would be a very easy door to attach to and pull off with an F-150 pickup truck or just break into. So, you know, again, it’s just like when we’re being called on fixes – the newer doors that were installed at the time of the build are so low quality that well i mean quite frankly we’ll tell a homeowner right to their face like no we cannot replace this panel this is beneath our standard this is a safety issue we’re gonna have to look at our selection of doors but ultimately this door is an unsafe option for you so just something to keep in mind the older doors um they tend to be heavier those those wooden type doors But that also brings up some other concerns, Bill, where, well, how heavy is that door? You know, one of the first things that we would do as a company if we were invited to your house is take a scale, a bathroom scale, and slide it under the door, detach the door from the opener itself, and then weigh that door. That door should weigh 10 pounds or less because there’s springs that are going to hold that door. yeah but the question is what happens about if that door weighs 20 pounds or what happens if it weighs 30 pounds so now we fast forward to a worst case scenario you’re in your house the power has been cut because of emp or whatever and you’ve got to get out of that out of your house well how heavy is your door are the springs so worn out that it’s going to be very difficult to lift or are you are you elderly i mean there’s a lot of these factors is like well that door should lift at 5 to 10 pounds, which should be pretty easy for most young and old adults just to get out. That’s a consideration that we would want to make.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, that’s an interesting point. I mean, I guess I never really understood what the springs were there for. I mean, when you hear the word spring, you think for absorption of of a bounce or something like that, but it’s wound tension to help pull the door up and help the door come back down at a reasonable rate so it doesn’t just slam down. Is that assessment correct?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, I’ll use the analogy like this. The garage door, depending on size, could weigh between 100 to… 800 pounds to five, you know, most commonly a 16 foot, which is a double car garage door is going to weigh between 175 to 350 to 400 pounds. That’s a heavy door. So now from there, that’s one of four pieces that we would look at in general terms. Then we would look at the springs. And then the cables and then the opener. Those are the other three pieces. And the way I would lay this out for anyone is, okay, we’re going to look at the door. The door is heavy. The springs are like the muscles. That’s responsible for lifting and setting down that door because they are under incredible tension. And then the cables are kind of like the arms. They’re going to help guide that door up and down and stay within the tracks. And then the opener itself is just the brains of the operation, right? The opener does not necessarily open or pull the door up or push it down. It’s there just to detect, okay, are we at that weight threshold so that we can pull this up and the spring is not broken? Or if we go to set it down, we’re not crushing something that shouldn’t be crushed beyond the floor. So the opener is the brains of this operation, and it’ll help decide start and stop. It is not there to lift anything. necessarily or push the door so yeah the springs are are a critically important factor um they’re our most common repair in Colorado they’re breaking all the time and oftentimes we’ll get a phone call too hey my opener is my opener is acting up it’s winter time so the first thing I’ll do or one of my team members will do is weigh that garage door like your spring looks intact but is it worn out Because if those muscles are wearing out, then can we draw some more life out of those springs by tightening them up, which is a dangerous professional operation? Or do we need to continue replacing those springs because we can’t apply the correct amount of tension?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, you know, honestly, you know, we deal with electrical panels and live electricity and I’ll cut live wires and, you know, stand up on the roof of somebody’s house and hold the wires from the pole with no protection and all that. That doesn’t bother me at all. But those garage springs scare me to death. I’m like, if that thing pops, I’m going to die. I just, I know I’m going to die.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, you can, yeah, I get it. Now, I would never hold two. I mean, I have a… If you told me to change an outlet, man, I’m going to be very nervous about that. But at this point in time, when you have the correct tools and the correct training, yeah, those springs become less scary. But ultimately, there’s a lot of energy in there. And you almost have a sense in the back of your mind. I hear this a lot of men. I looked at a YouTube video and it just said pass. And I’m like, well, good, brother. I’m glad you did. Because there’s a lot more steps than just unwinding that spring, which itself is very dangerous. But where is that door situated? Because if those springs get angry, they get very angry. And we’re talking flying parts. And we hope that those aren’t attached to your body. But cables and bolts and metal, that’s no joke. And every year, every year, there are hundreds of of injuries and in some worst case scenarios, casualties, fatalities because of DIYs gone bad. Wow.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s crazy, you know, because I know on Saturday, John does a Fix-It radio show, and this is, you know, a lot of conversation could fill into that show as well because they talk a lot about homeowner repairs and things like that. This one is one you do not want to mess with, for sure. You made a statement that you do that a lot in Colorado. I mean, this program goes out to five different states, and I’m sure it’s pretty similar climates and things, but is there a reason, do you think, that being in Colorado would cause the springs to go out, or why do you think you replace more in Colorado?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m asked that often, too. The answer is that thermal heating and thermal cooling that those springs undergo on a daily basis in the winter months. As we know in Colorado, that if the sun is out and it’s 55 degrees outside and that sun is bearing down on the door, well, the metal within that door is heating up beyond 55 degrees, and that’s the middle of the day. And so now you’ve got this spring that’s gotten warm, and then at nighttime, 22 degrees is 22 degrees, zero and zero. So unlike many states, like in the Midwest, for example, where I’m from, in the wintertime, it’s pretty steady. But here we see these fluctuations that go all over the place. And so, yeah, it’s a lot for this metal to – to withstand. There are options available for homeowners. We present those options, and it would sound like, hey, we can do a like-for-like swap on this spring at this price. If you want to upcycle that spring, which means a thicker gauge of metal, well, then you’re going to get a lot more cycles out of this spring. It’s going to be thicker and more resilient to those factors that cause them to break so frequently in Colorado. Because, yeah, it’s our most common call right now. It would sound like, hey, I heard a loud bang in my garage. I went out there. It looked fine. Now my opener won’t work. I can’t get it open. Or then I notice that the spring above the door was busted or the door got very, very heavy. And that’s, yeah, Colorado is beautiful and gorgeous in the wintertime, but, man, it’s hectic on metal in the garage. Yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
It’s actually a pretty harsh environment because of those swifts. You know, we have heating and cooling, too, and there could be days where you’re running your furnace and your air conditioning on the same day. You know, it’s cold in the morning, and then it gets really hot in the afternoon, so we see these swings, and it’s just crazy. The UV on cars, and it’s just, yeah, it’s a pretty harsh environment, we should say. And with that common of those springs, There’s really no way to tell that it’s kind of going bad for the average homeowner, is there?
SPEAKER 08 :
The best way a homeowner, an average homeowner can do, or a thing they can do is take their bathroom scale, take it to the garage, make sure it’s set to zero, slide it under the door, unhook the motor, and then weigh that door. Again, that door should weigh between 5 and 10 pounds. If we’re at 20 pounds, just know that your spring is wearing out. It could be addressed. with a service call and we will do our best to add tension into that spring before it breaks, which is inevitable. However, a wearing out or a broken spring is going to put a lot of undue pressure and stress and strain on that opener. And you know, that, that becomes a worst case scenario, not a worst case, a worse scenario because we’re looking at a broken spring and now replacing an opener and, and it’s going to be a tough one to walk away from. Um, especially this time of year. It’s like, man, I was going to buy some Christmas presents. Now I got a brand new opener that I can brag to my neighbors about. No one’s going to be impressed. So yeah, to answer your question, you can weigh that door. Any person can weigh that door, and I would just set that door on there. Again, it should be easy to move up and down without the opener attached, or you can call us to have us come out and do it, and we’ll weigh that for you and just say, hey, look, this is where we’re at, and this is what we can do, and we’ll give you three or four options and decide which one makes the most sense.
SPEAKER 06 :
That sounds great. Hey, we’ve got to take a quick break. And after the break, I’ve got a lot more questions for you. If you want to call in, the number is 303-477-5600. Maybe tell us some of your stories with your garage door opener. Or if you’ve got questions for Chris, that would be great. So we’ll be right back after the break. 560-KLZ.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 06 :
All right, and we are back. Again, if you’ve got questions, 303-477-5600. And my website, if you’re interested in any of the things that I do, it will lead you to the church that I pastor. It will lead you to the information on the gun classes we teach, information on the chickens we raise, the rabbits we raise, the generators we can put in, arc electric heating and cooling, all that fun stuff. The website is prep2protect.org. co.com prep the number to protect co.com. And also we’ve been putting up blogs up there. So blogs just to help you with this kind of topical information about this type of mindset. And you can check those out to Chris, tell people how they can get ahold of you.
SPEAKER 08 :
You can go to the website, which is Hummel, H-U-M-M, like Mike, Mike, E-L, and then OHD.com, so HummelOHD.com. Or you can call us at our business line at 720-797-7815, 720-797-7815. Oftentimes, you know, or you can just type, go to Dads at Castle Rock, go to one of the Facebook groups and type in garage, see who pops up first, and it’ll probably be our company.
SPEAKER 06 :
Awesome. That sounds great. So, you know, I’ve seen a lot of things being in a lot of homes. The most common thing I see is probably the old ancient craftsman garage doors. I’m like, you probably should change that at some point, really old ones. And we’re just waiting for the time for them to go out. How long does the average garage door opener last?
SPEAKER 08 :
They last usually around 20 years or so, Bill, even the old ones and new ones as well. They’re built pretty tough. If you’re going to go with a lift master type of a brand, again, it’s my preferred installed brand of garage door opener. The internal mechanism parts are metal like the ones that were built 20 years ago. Now, you know, I would offer a warning to someone if they buy an opener off of a rack at a box store like a Lowe’s or a Home Depot that the quality of parts are just not going to be And, you know, it’s going to be one of those you get what you pay for kind of mentality. And it really is. But, yeah, about 20 years.
SPEAKER 06 :
You know, a lot of people don’t understand that, Chris. They go to the Orange or the Blue store and they see the same brand name. Um, but it’s different. Usually the stuff that’s sold for a sold for those orange and blue stores are usually a lower grade. It’s almost like it’s a homeowner grade and then you got a builder’s grade and then you got the professional grade and trying to tell people that, cause they’ll go, Hey, I went to home Depot and this, you know, water heater or this, whatever was X amount of dollars. And you’re like, yeah, mine’s more. And they don’t see, they don’t understand the difference between, you know, what grade they put that out. The name brand is there. And you can’t really tell. If you just look at the box, you can’t really tell very easily that it’s a different grade. It’s not the same stuff that you buy. It’s lower quality for sure. You’d find that hard to believe, and I don’t know why manufacturers do that. I mean, if you go through the effort of building something, why don’t you just build something? Why do you got to build something and have the same brand name on it, the same model number on it, but yet have different – different grades that one that you sell the the blue store and one that you sell to the you know supply house and one you sell to the contractor and one I mean it’s just crazy isn’t it it is and I I think that well I mean you know it’s it’s what’s also frustrating is hey I just bought this opener will you install it and it becomes a
SPEAKER 08 :
difficult conversation that ends with, no, we will not. It does not meet our standard. I think part of this answer, and it could be a long one, is if you were to call my business or call your business, our name is attached to it. And we have our profiles and our reviews there for a reason. And it’s to really stand by the quality of work and the service that we offer. The blue store or the orange store, I mean, is it their best interest to keep selling you parts? Because they’re always there. And, you know, it’s that, you know, why am I paying you quadruple? I’ve heard this, to install that opener. And it’s because, well, you’re going to get quadruple prices. the life, the quadruple the service. You have my phone number. You have my business. There’s too much at stake for me to do a bad job here or to overcharge you as a customer to, you know, I’m having a hard time finishing that sentence, to install a cheaper grade or to do it unprofessionally or to, you know, to use a low-quality product here. And that’s why. So it’s something to keep in mind.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. And you, I get that often too. I think people are so afraid of the contractor markup. You know, they’re like, well, you’re, you’re making money on, on this and they’ll, they’ll, they’ll look up the price of an outlet and you know, Hey, that’s 30 cents that, you know, here, or I can buy this on Amazon and, And, hey, let me supply them because, you know, you’re going to charge me a dollar. Yeah, I’m going to charge you a dollar because I’m going to, one, get you a better quality outlet. Two, I had to go get that outlet. Three, I’m going to warranty that outlet, you know. The fourth thing is I know what I’m buying. When the homeowner buys, you know, I’ve showed up to so many jobs and they’re like, hey, we bought this and here’s your parts. And I’m like, you bought everything wrong. I can’t use any of this stuff, you know. And so now the time is burnt. because I don’t have the right stuff and now I got to go buy it for you. So, you know, Hey, even if it’s a 30% markup, Chris, it’s well worth it. Right. It’s well worth it in my opinion. But, you know, the other thing that I’ve seen in garages is, you know, the, the, the thinner ones, I should say the thinner metal ones, people sometimes will cut insulation, like the foam insulation boards with the reflector on it. And they’ll put those in between the panels and,
SPEAKER 08 :
to quote insulate the door a little bit and i think it’s a great idea but what does that do that adds a ton of weight doesn’t it to that spring yeah it does a couple of things i mean number one it’s going to add it’s going to add weight which does offset the balance of that door and does impact the overall performance of its of the tension on those springs that’s a concern of ours you know will that will that cause a problem down the road the answer is most likely yes unless you decide to do that and then have your springs addressed. Again, those are the muscles, and you want to keep those healthy, just like we do in our bodies. If you have a heavier door and weaker muscles, then something’s going to go sideways. Secondly, the foam, it would be like putting a sponge from your sink on the back of your window in your kitchen and now calling it insulated glass. All the exposed surface area around that piece of insulation is allowing cold air to draft in and draft out. So, you know, is it working? You know, I don’t think it is. I would recommend getting an insulated door. I would recommend having an insulated door installed for a number of reasons. One of those being it adds weight to that door. But when you install an insulated door, know that the company, the dealer, which would be me, is going to install that door with the correct hardware to match the weight of that door. That door will then be quieter. It’ll be safer. It’ll be reinforced. It’ll be warmer in the wintertime and cooler in the summertime. And for a few hundred dollars more, again, when we talk about laying out the options, these would be explained for considerations based on your budget. But insulated doors certainly are great. However, the shiny back, did-it-myself kind of a door, we replace a lot of those for a reason. And the reasons are more than a few.
SPEAKER 06 :
And back on the topic of security, I mean, what’s the difference between an insulated door versus a steel back door?
SPEAKER 08 :
That’s a great question because there’s two types of, you can think of it as two types of insulated door. Type one would be a vinyl back insulated door. That would mean as a homeowner, if you were to touch the back of your door to see if it’s been insulated, you would not be able to see the print pattern that’s on the front of that door. Does that make sense? There’s usually some kind of a print or a stamped print on the door. An insulated door is going to insulate that. You’re not going to be able to see it. The second thing is, does this feel soft or does it feel hard? Is it going to be like a foamy or a plasticky type texture? That would be considered a vinyl back insulated door. That’s going to offer more insulation than one that doesn’t have it. But then a steel back or a triple layer door is going to have insulation within it. And that insulation is also, that can be really, really good insulation or it could just be foam panels. But that steel-backed insulated door is going to allow a higher security yield by way of just reinforcing that door. Now that door has become heavier to pull off the tracks or to punch through to then gain access. So of the three door types, yeah, a steel-backed insulated door would be the recommended option. But to take it a step further, and I think it’s appropriate to mention this, that along the back of the door, if you’re looking at the back of your door, we can add struts to the back of that door. And to try to explain that, these are horizontal pieces of metal that are lightweight, but still a 14-gauge bent steel door. attachment. Those are used for most commonly to add reinforcement to that door in a windy environment. However, if you can imagine putting more than two or three of those along the back side of your door, side to side, horizontally, that now you’ve made your garage door more like a cage. so that if someone wanted to ram into it, they’re going to get stuck. Or if they wanted to pull it off, well, it’s going to be harder to pull off. I mean, this would be an access point and a resolution that can be handled. Then that’s an inexpensive, all things considered, an inexpensive reinforcement mechanism that a homeowner can have attached to the back of a garage.
SPEAKER 06 :
And that’s called reinforcement bars. Is that the same thing as a door brace or are they kind of the same things?
SPEAKER 08 :
It’s kind of the same thing. The terminology would be struts. How many struts are in the back of that door? How many struts would I recommend as your garage guy saying you get? What are you trying to do here? The strut itself is going to reinforce the door. And if you want to up the security factor, then that strut, which, again, those are available not at Home Depot. Those are available at professional suppliers. that we would then pick up and attach to the back of that door professionally. So it’s a reinforced mechanism that allows that door to withstand wind, but also break-ins and those things. Imagine trying to punch through a door with a screwdriver or a crowbar. and now you’ve got a tear, and then you meet a strut, a horizontal strut, and they’ve got to go beneath that. Well, okay, how far? And then you meet another strut. Now that criminal has to be very committed to then break into the home, or they’re going to say, screw it, we’re going to go to the neighbor’s house because that one looks easier, and they punch through and they’re in. So, again, a relatively inexpensive security attachment to the back of that door that would prevent – easy access once the front of that door has been compromised by way of breach.
SPEAKER 06 :
And that’s something that somebody can, maybe they don’t have the budget to replace their entire door, but that’s something they can have you out on a more minimal financial commitment and still get somewhat, you know, safe with their current situation, with their current door that they already have. That’s definitely something they could do, right? Right.
SPEAKER 08 :
It is. It goes back to that safety element, like a safety inspection check. My typical call or my 15-point inspection service and lube fee is $179, and that’s market rate that’s common amongst the market. Right now, and if we have a listener listening in and they’re in the Colorado area, call me up and mention the show, and I’ll take $100 off. That will include the inspection fee. And I can point out these things because the list is long. Then we can look at your tracks. We can look at your rollers. We can weigh that door for you. We can lubricate it. And the idea here, Bill, is to just draw as much life out of that door. for this month for $80 so that we can then move into January and have a better idea of what we’re dealing with on our home. From there, if there’s options that need to be considered, we can consider those options. We can piecemeal those one at a time. Like, hey, how about a couple of struts? Okay, let’s look at the cost here. Let’s do it. Let’s go. I can get those installed this afternoon. Or, man, this spring is on its way out. Or my door sounds achy and moaning and groaning. Can you resolve that? The answer is oftentimes we can. And if we can resolve that noise, well, just know we’re drawing life out of that door, out of that 15-year-old opener. Or out of that door that’s being, you know. Or maybe the hinges, Bill. Maybe those hinges are broken. are coming loose. These are problems that we can address right away because of our expertise. It’s kind of like that car mechanic who can put his hand on the hood of your car and say, yeah, I know what’s going on here. The door is much easier. We can quickly assess and say, OK, that needs to go. That’s on its way out. We should address this pretty soon. This is a safety issue. You have little ones. You might want to consider this right away. You want to, you know, or we can prioritize, you know, like that opener is pretty old. You know, we have options that have cameras on them. The list is endless, but it would start with a professional visit.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, that’s a thought there, you know, camera on your opener. So if somebody does get in and I’m assuming it’s motion activated or whatever, then you get an alert on your phone or whatever it may be. And you can now see somebody. Well, after the second break here, we’ll get into some more of the security ideas, but you know, how many break-ins have you seen or have you heard of or dealt with? I mean, I’m sure most of your business is obviously maintenance and breakdowns and things, but Is there anything you can share with some examples of some break-ins that maybe you’ve seen or you’ve heard of or experienced on that side of things?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, we can go into that now. We can go into it after break. If you want to, Bill, you tell me. You want to take a break first or you want me to share with you a couple of examples?
SPEAKER 06 :
Let’s do this. share a couple of examples and then we’ll hit that break and then we’ll, we’ll end the, end the show with some, some things people can do to mitigate the, the potentials here.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yep. We just installed a set of doors and a set of openers and a woman in Arvada. And she said, you know, my mom would, my mom could use this. We had, she has security cameras on the perimeter of her home and the door was left open. She had, she has like a, like a Lamborghini and a Bugatti, obviously very wealthy woman. Um, and they could see men walking in and men leaving with boxes. Uh, one night, and this is, this, uh, And it’s like, well, but we don’t know what was taken. You know, she’s elderly. She’s in her 80s, and she has those cars, Bill. But it’s like, well, my customer’s position was if we would have had these cameras on the opener, because they turn on and start recording as soon as that door is open. It’s also as easy as an app on your phone. I mean, these Liftmasters all have the MyQ app on there, and that’s a real quick check. The door is open. Your kids are playing in the driveway. What’s going on out there? Pull up your phone, activate the camera, and you’ve got a bird’s-eye view, and it’s perfect. before a problem occurs. But yeah, certainly these types of break-ins occur. Just yesterday, a guy had said, you know, we had to leave our door open because the spring was broken. In this other city that we’re from, everything would have been taken. Everything would have been taken. I’m like, yeah, you know, we are in a safer community here, but that added security. Most criminals know that if they go to your front door, there’s a ring camera or some kind of camera on their face. Most criminals know that the garages are, that’s a big open, that’s a blank spot that they can walk in there. They are shielded. They cover their face for five seconds. They open the door and they are home free. There aren’t cameras in the garage unless you have an opener with those Tesla cameras on them.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s a really good point. I never even thought about that.
SPEAKER 08 :
$300 more.
SPEAKER 06 :
Wow, that’s great. All right, we’ll talk more about some of the things we’ll do. We’ve got to grab a break here, Chris. We’ll talk about some more of the things that we can do to help mitigate those break-ins and to secure our home as we come back. This is 560-KLZ.
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SPEAKER 06 :
And welcome back to Ready Radio. I’m Bill Anderson today. So I’m in for John Rush. And we have with us Chris Hummel from Hummel’s Garage Doors Openers and Overheads. And I messed up your whole name there, Chris. Go ahead and tell us where your name is one more time.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, it’s Hummel’s – that’s fine. It’s Hummel’s overhead garage door. So you almost messed me up too, Bill.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, sorry about that. I had it on a different sheet of paper and got a little lost in my notes. So so far we talked about, you know, maintenance and making sure we’re ready so that, you know, in the dead of a blizzard or something, our doors open, you know, in the middle of the night if we have an emergency and we have to get out, we can count on that garage door opening and some of the things that, that we can do to make sure those stores are functioning, some things to look at, taking you up on your wonderful offer to have you come out and check out. And we briefly talked about some of the security things and how easy it is to just overcome these stores. And you made a great point before the break that that’s often a blind spot in our security system with cameras and ring cameras and things. People think they got it covered with just that. But I think one of the biggest things that we see with the garage door is just leaving it open, you know, having access and just leaving that open and allowing people to come and go as they please without, you know, closing it. We should be closing it. But I also heard another garage guy at one time told me, hey, don’t treat that garage as your front door, meaning don’t use it all the time. I mean, you got any comments on that?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I think that whether that advice is taken or not, that people are using that garage door as their main point of entry now. I think that when you’re coming home, the last thing you want to do is – is open your garage door opener with your remote, pull your car into the garage, and then close the garage door, go to the front of your house, and walk in. I think that now you come out, you open your garage door, you pull in, you close your garage door, you go right into your kitchen, and it’s become the primary entry point. I think that’s the statement you were making, and it’s just very common. I think when you have children and many young families know that that door is going up and down and up and down and up and down. 7, 8, 9, 10 times before noon on a weekend or in the summertime. So these are all things that kind of go by way. I’m not thinking about that when it comes to the care and maintenance. Again, it puts emphasis on that offer that I’m presenting to your listeners, which is let us come up and just take a peek at it and solve problems before they exist. Because, yeah, that door gets open. I mean, imagine never doing an oil change. You know, it’s just like, oh, well, my car stopped working. Yeah, well, that’s how it works in the garage door space.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, well, the biggest thing that we all kind of fail on and, well, at least I’ll say. is the maintenance of things. You know, there’s just so much. Life just gets so busy and things can just get forgotten about. I think garage doors openers are definitely one that can be forgotten about. You know, we talked about, you know, forcing weak or thin doors, how easy that is. We talked about that, you know, hey, you’ve got the door-to-door point, what I call the garage door to the door of the house point. And I think you should always leave that door locked for the most part because if they do, you know, overcome that garage door, then, you know, they don’t have open access to your house that you lock the door. You know, I used to get pretty aggravated at my wife because she’d lock the door and I’d why go out to the garage and it would be locked, you know, cause we got our freezer out there and extra refrigerator out there or whatever. And it’s like, the door’s locked, the door’s locked, the door’s locked. But then I started to appreciate that because she’s like, well, somebody gets into our house because another thing too, they can, they can break into cars. They can steal, they can steal, um, you know, uh, door openers. They can steal these things. Uh, I’ve known people that, you know, have had their, their garage door stolen out of their car and they didn’t really realize it. And now it’s just a matter of time that they find your house and, get in. So closing that door, I think is really important. We talked a little bit about the opener technology and the old radio waves versus the rolling codes. Now those are still able to be compromised, maybe a little bit harder, the tool-based entry, but there’s something out there that I think is probably the most common other than leaving the door open. And what did you call it? The, the coat hanger trick.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, there is, I mean, and this, again, it’s common in the criminal world, and it would be called the coat hanger break-in. And this is a 10-second or a 6-second, I don’t know, what’s the right word? That’s how long it would take. So, and I’ll set it up this way. Most garage door openers are going to be a trolley-based system. That means that you have the door in the front, and then you have the openers in the center of your ceiling and then that’s connected to a rail and then on the rail is a J-arm and the J-arm is what’s going to attach to the door itself. As most of us know there is a cord hanging off of that trolley that we can then pull in case of an emergency and we’ve talked about it in the show that detaches the opener from the door and allows you to push and move that door up very easily. Most commonly today, there are no longer locks on the door. The installer is relying or the homeowner is relying on that J-arm attachment, that attachment of the opening of the door to serve as the lock. The coat hanger break-in is a criminal can take a ladder, put it right into the front of the house, take a coat hanger thread it through the top of the door and then pull or detach the opener from the door and now you’ve got you’ve got a a very cheap very effective very easy way to get into that garage and that could be a one thousand dollar opener it could be a three thousand dollar door And the question is, well, how can we prevent that from happening? So, again, a listener, anyone that’s hearing me right now, I would Google or I would look or I’d go on Amazon and search for a garage defender plate. or a door double shield. It’s very difficult to explain what that would look like, but it’s essentially a shield, a plastic shield that would sit in front of that attachment so that if a criminal goes to stick his apparatus, a coat hanger, it’s going to block that. These are thin. They’re cheap, $35 to $50. install it yourself, and on to the next one. Okay, we cannot detach this door, and it is a very effective way for someone to bypass the entire system. And then the last thing I’ll say is, okay, so that’s real. That happens. You cannot do it on your front door. The criminal knows. I have a coat hanger. How am I going to break into this house? I have two options here. The front door, no option. The garage door, easy option. And that’s a ladder and a trained hand, and boom, you’re in. And it’s a scary reality. And it’s a $50 fix for that DIY guy. That one you can do yourself. That will not offset the weight of your door and cause a problem down the road.
SPEAKER 06 :
Gotcha. I have what I call – I don’t know the technical name, Chris, but I call it a sidewinder, where my motor’s on the side – of my garage door. It’s not the old traditional carriage that you called it. But it still has a string, but is that string a little harder to grab with a coat hanger?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, and that would be, you know, for anyone that’s like, okay, well, I have some, you know, I want to offer the most security possible to my garage door system, starting with the opener. What kind of an opener should I install? It’s going to be a side mount or a jack shaft. One of those side mounted openers, those open the door much faster than a trolley mounted system. They’re more expensive. You cannot… From the outside, get in past the door and relieve that. It’s still going to have that emergency release because, again, those are there for emergencies. You’re in the house. It’s on fire. You’ve got to get out. You’ve got to, you know, the front door is compromised. Okay, let’s go through the garage, pull the string, lift the door, and bail. So they have to exist. It just so happens that on the trolley systems, criminals know. Okay, well, that’s also our access point. On a side-mounted system, that’s been nullified. They cannot get in.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, I know on ours we only got about a minute left here, Chris, but on mine, too, my garage goes down, and there’s automatic things that come in the side that lock. They just happen automatically. They go into the frame, and I like that idea, too.
SPEAKER 08 :
100%. Yeah, that’s, again, my preferred brand is going to be a LiftMaster jack shaft, and that’s exactly how they operate. The door is going to go up or down very quickly. And then once it’s at its bottom position, boom, you’ll hear those bolts slide, and nothing will make you feel more secure.
SPEAKER 06 :
Awesome. All right, Chris, one more time, give us your address, your email, your website, and your phone number so people can contact you and take you up on that wonderful offer.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yep, sure. It’s Hummel, H-U-M-M-E-L-O-H-D.com. And my phone number is 720-797-7815.
SPEAKER 06 :
Chris, I appreciate the time today. It was a great conversation. I think it’s an important one, something that we forget about in all of our preparedness. And, hey, the Lord bless you and keep you and his face shine upon you. And we’ll see you on Thursday, Chris.
SPEAKER 08 :
God bless, Bill. Thank you very much for inviting me on the show. This was a lot of fun.
SPEAKER 06 :
All right. You take care. All right. Well, what a great show. Next week, I’m not sure what John has planned, but we’ll figure out something. And look forward to talking to you guys next week. In the meantime, prep2protectco.com. Have an awesome week, Denver.
SPEAKER 04 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
