On Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:31:02 -0800, jloomis wrote:
I have no problems with your troubles and exploration of your door.
Those darn things can be daunting.
Thanks for understanding.
I need help when I ask, and then, when I'm done, I've been on the net
long enough to know to give back to the group (hopefully in spades),
by paying it forward.
It was interesting though to read constantly about how dangerous it was,
yet to not find in the literature very many documented examples of how
exactly these people get hurt.
To be sure, I'm positive people get hurt every day (but most are likely
commercial accidents due to common mistakes the professionals make
when they're not careful doing something they do 10 times a day, every day).
For example, Dan Musick himself told me that he hurt his leg simply by
stepping off the ladder onto the old spring on the floor. I'm sure he
put old springs on the floor hundreds of times - but if you do that day
in and day out, one of those days you're gonna trip on that spring and
break your leg.
In addition, I'm sure that homeowners do some really really really dumb
things, e.g., Dan Musick says on his web site that one of his customers
unbolted the spring anchor plate without first untensioning the torsion
spring! That customer was lucky to get out of that one alive!
And not everyone survives their dumb mistakes.
For example, I read this 2004 OSHA Fatality Assessment of a NY maintenance
man who got killed in maintaining a commercial torsion spring.
http://health.ny.gov/environmental/i...cs/04ny135.pdf
However, if you read that report closely, you'll see MANY compound mistakes
piled up one upon another - with the result being his eventual death.
I even searched the bestgore web site expecting to find garage door
accidents galore - but alas - it was to no avail.
If you look at garage door accident statistics, there are 20K injuries
in American garages every year - but most of them appear to be to the
consumer and not to the repairman working on the garage door.
http://prlog.org/11649315-garage-doo...till-ugly.html
(Plus, the statistics are a
PR stunt for a garage-door company.)
This garage door company mimics those dire statistics:
http://www.coveryourgaragedoortracks.com/statistics.htm
Another door company publishes vastly different "statistics":
http://nhdoors.com/2010/06/injury_statistics/
Here they say 10K people are hurt every year by having their fingers
pinched off in the door panels or having the whole door fall on them.
Perhaps more reliably, this scientific study of shows 85 children killed
or seriously injured since 1974 when garage door openers didn't reverse
on time (notice the numerical difference with the manufacturers' statistics):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8885959
And, perhaps most apropos, this study shows the percentage of DIY accidents:
http://www.garagedoorchildsafety.com/injury_report.html
Where DIY accidents were 1610 out of 13,325.
Personally, I suspect all (or almost all) the DIY accidents were from
people doing dumb things like using screwdrivers to wind the springs,
or using flimsy ladders, or unbolting the anchor bracket without
detorsioning the spring, or failing to disconnect the GDO before working
on the door and then someone pressed the button - or - even this - forgetting
to gently move the black widow spider from the web-strewn upper door area!
http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11440621.jpg
YES! That's 'my' black widow spider. I found it while I was setting up a
safe and clean environment to work safely in on 'my' garage door repair!