Re: Garage Door Contact - Any alternatives to drilling concrete?

["Frank Winans" <fwinans@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Beachcomber" wrote
{howto sense open garage door w/o using sensor
at bottom of door?}

A) Often you just need a short annunciation in some
usually-occupied part of the house that the door is
in motion -- if so, then hang a transformer on the
opener unit's courtesy 'light-up-the-room' lightbulb
socket(s), and run that low voltage across the house
to a 12 volt lamp at said part of house.  Sadly most
modern units turn off the light after the door's been up
for a bit, to save bulb life I suppose, so this isn't for
just everyone's tastes.
B) Don't sell jury-rigging short;  for instance you can
extend the 'reach' of a momentary switch with a long
springy strap or whisker -- in the deluxe version, with a
roller or slippery curl on the end.  Have that bear
against something at or near the top of the door,
where nobody'll mind it.  I just love little
Cherry {TM} switches, and some of them come with this.

Or have a bracket on the door push on your switch on,
or off to the side of, the frame via spring or something
else spongy;  the goal here is to make it all work with
no precise positioning needed.

Where to scrounge scrap metal?  Saw blades are nice
and springy, and you can savage discarded mattresses
for good stout coil springs to hacksaw a few inches from...

Last time I was called to 'fix' an old project like this, it
was actually an erratic bulb filament at fault, so try a
new remote-socket bulb _first_ when things get flooky.
Glue spare bulbs to your fixture with rubber cement,
as the next homeowner ten or twenty years later
won't have a clue where to buy them...

C) Drilled concrete probably isn't as horrible a liability as
one might suppose, though it's rough to accomplish.  And
they make some really wonderful glues nowadays, so you
could put stubby screws in to plug the fixture holes, and glue
the base down instead...  Chisel it all off cleanly if you have
regrets later.