On Saturday, September 5, 2015 at 5:17:42 PM UTC-7, Jeff Wisnia wrote:

The old opener was from an era before the use of a photoelectric safety
beam across the bottom of the door opening, but the new one I installed
naturally has them.

All seems to be working well, but one thing has me wondering. The door
was open, it was daytime and I walked into the garage to grab a
gardening tool I needed outside.

When my leg crossed the photoelectric beam the Opener's light came on
and stayed on for the same time it would have if I'd just opened the door.

Is this a normal action for Craftsman openers? I can live with it, but
it sure seems uneccessary and won't help the life of the light bulb,
will it?


It's normal for the lightbulb to come on that way with all openers
made by Chamberlain (Sears, Chamberlain, and Liftmaster), and it
doesn't hurt the lifespan anywhere as much as motor vibration does.
I haven't bought any rough service (vibration resistant) bulbs in
a long time, but Sears brand rough service incandescent bulbs
used to be some of the cheapest good ones. If you live where the
winters aren't too cold, like below 0 Fahrenheit, you can use
ordinary CFLs instead.

It's a lot better to have a newer opener because burglars could
easily defeat the coding of the old remotes, either by copying it
when a remote was used or by using a gadget to transmit all
1,000 - 50,000 different codes. OTOH if your garage door has
clear windows near the top, the new openers are still vulnerable
to somebody poking a long stiff wire with a hook at the end
between the top of the door and the threshold and looking through
the window to guide wire to just behind the emergency release and
pulling it forward. I think the only brand without that weakness
was Stanley because the release had to be pulled straight down.
the release