Chamberlain RJO70 Wall-Mounted Garage Door Opener
While Kelly got jewelry for our 5 year anniversary...she went a less expected route for what she got me: a garage door opener she knew I thought was cool. It's a wall-mounted directly attached opener, the Chamberlain RJO70.
It's so much quieter than the old chain drive overhead unit that was installed when the house was built in 2003; the main source of noise is really the door itself at this point. It has integrated wifi as well, so the Z-Wave garage door controller I'd added to automate the old unit (closing the door when left open in the evening and providing another way to get into the house via a phone) was no longer needed either. The unit also includes a pretty bright LED ceiling light that triggers on an occupancy sensor integrated with the wall mounted open/close switch. The final new bit was a deadbolt that mounts under the unit, sliding through the door tracks to lock the door into place.
Because the opener mounts on the front wall, turning the shaft above the door directly, I needed an additional power outlet added high up on the front corner. We called the electrician who did some of the final bits of our master bathroom remodel and had him add one. It was pretty expensive for what it was (looking at it after the fact), but it was done quickly. One part of his work was to also run low voltage wire over to that front corner as well (extending from the spot in the center of the ceiling where it was feeding the old unit) to for the control of the unit.
I hired a garage door company I'd found off Yelp that had great reviews, Always Available Garage Door Repair. A guy came by and quoted the work, and said I'd need an electrician to add the outlet and run the low voltage wire. That led me to the work above. After having that done, I had the garage door company back to do the installation. It turns out that the electrician had run low voltage wire...but not connected it to the old low voltage wire that ran to the ceiling. The garage door installer said he is not licensed to do that connection, even though it's quick and easy, so he gave me time to get on a ladder and join them myself. That done – he tested the result – he could do the installation.
Not long later, the unit was on the wall and and he was done and left. I realized the ceiling light hadn't been installed as part of his work, so I installed that myself. Looking over the unit, I realized one last thing: the deadbolt was not installed. Worse, it was nowhere to be found. The remaining packaging material was empty. I hadn't even unboxed the unit before the installer arrived, so it's impossible that it was misplaced ahead of the job. I texted the installer back, as we'd been texting in prior weeks coordinating the job. No response. I called the company's phone number, getting messages that the voice mail box for this subscriber was full. I filled out the contact form on the website....no response. I did all of these multiple times, and still haven't heard back! This was about a year ago, and still nothing. At first, I wondered if perhaps the company owner had gotten COVID-19 or something else to have him out of commission (hence the full voicemail)...but no, there have been glowing Yelp reviews posted in the months since. I at least added mine after a few weeks of being ghosted here.