yo! http://www.rxreed.net Mon, 30 Jan 2012 02:16:07 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Are garage sensors required for apartment buildings? http://www.rxreed.net/apartment-buildings/are-garage-sensors-required-for-apartment-buildings http://www.rxreed.net/apartment-buildings/are-garage-sensors-required-for-apartment-buildings#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:33:46 +0000 admin http://www.rxreed.net/apartment-buildings/are-garage-sensors-required-for-apartment-buildings I would like to know if apartment buildings are required to have sensors on their automatic (opened with a key) garage doors. The garage door of my apartment building closed on the hood of my car as I was passing through and the property management is refusing to pay because “they are not responsible.” If [...]


]]> I would like to know if apartment buildings are required to have sensors on their automatic (opened with a key) garage doors. The garage door of my apartment building closed on the hood of my car as I was passing through and the property management is refusing to pay because “they are not responsible.” If they are not responsible for THEIR garage door, then who is?

This is in Milwaukee (Milwaukee County), Wisconsin.

Is it a large parking garage for the whole building? If so, they probably are not required to (even though it is good business sense) since it would then be considered a commercial application even though people live in the building. However you would have to look at your local building codes.

New residential operators are required to have them under UL325. However UL doesn’t concern itself w/ damage to vehicles & the requirement is to protect people, especially children that play under the door. The photo-cells are required to be 2"-5" off of the floor. Therefore a car could already be under a door before the photo-cells "see" the tires and therefore the vehicle could still be damaged (especially when the car is moving faster than the operator can react).

Personally the company I work for would never install this type of door without photo-cells and a reversing edge across the bottom of the door but every company doesn’t live by the same philosophy. In todays world a lot of jobs go to the lowest price & if something isn’t in the specs it isn’t going to be included in the lowest bid. However like I already said, even if they were there the door could still have damaged a moving car.

There are a lot of unstated variables to say who is it at fault, responsible, or liable. Things like were you the one that opened the door, what made the door close as you were driving in, & what actions did you take or not take?

However, one must ask how you couldn’t see the door closing before it hit the car? These types of doors don’t usually close all that fast (1′ per sec) & in most cases it would have to be at least half way closed before it would hit the hood of a normal car. It would be very easy for someone to argue that you had to see the door closing & you assumed that it was going to reverse, so you purposely drove into a closing door. I’m not assuming that is what happened in your case but it would be a very valid argument that you would have to be prepared to defend yourself against should you decide to pursue a court case.

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