Top 5 Ways Smart Garage Doors Can Make Your Life Easier

Did you remember to shut your garage door? It’s a question millions of people have on their minds at any given point — and one that doesn’t have to plague the minds of homeowners with smart garage doors.

70% or more American homeowners use the garage as their main entrance to their home, and why not? It’s convenient, private and safe. At least, it’s as safe as you make it. A smart garage door offers an added layer of safety to your home security setup, but that’s not the only benefit. Installing a smart garage door can also make your life easier.

01. Control Entry from Anywhere

Smart garage doors offer homeowners the ability to open their garage door from anywhere. If you’re at work and your child comes home early from school because of illness, you don’t have to leave the office to let him or her in. Stuck in bed due to illness or injury but need to let a friend or caregiver in to help? Not a problem. Just use the app on your phone or other compatible devices to open the garage door.

A smart garage door lets you remotely control your garage door whether you’re in your home, at work or across the country. Obviously, this feature has its safety advantages, but it also streamlines your life. If you have mobility issues or just aren’t moving as quickly as you used to, a smart garage door opener can help you meet drop-in guests before they leave with the notion you aren’t home.

You can also utilize this feature to allow entry for parcel and package delivery, home service installation or repair persons or other services that come with a vague, large window where you’d otherwise be waiting at home for someone to show up. Cable’s out? No need to take the day off of work, just have the technician call you when they reach your home. Waiting for a new appliance to be delivered? Again, just have the company notify you when they’re at your residence and you can let them in and lock the door behind them to keep your new purchase safe and sound.

02. Improve Peace of Mind

Modern life is stressful enough, and stress contributes to many major chronic illnesses from heart disease to Alzheimer’s, to relatively minor issues like insomnia and gastrointestinal upset. You don’t need more stress in your life, you need less. By installing a smart garage door, you’ll eliminate the nagging worry about whether your garage door is open or shut.

Using the technology associated with a smart garage door, you’ll be able to instantly check on the status of your door in a matter of seconds — again, whether you’re home or not. And if you find you actually did forget to shut the door before leaving, it’s not a problem: you can shut your garage door from the very same app.  

Having a smart garage door can also free your mind from the worry of break-ins and vandalism. If you’ve got a rowdy group of neighborhood kids who like breaking vehicle windows or searching cars for change, you’ll rest easier knowing that your garage door will alert you if the door is tampered with. Say, for example, something happens in the middle of the night: you don’t even need to leave the comfort of your bed to call someone to check it out. You can maintain a safe distance while still handling the problem quickly, efficiently and effectively.

03. Keep Tabs on Your Family

If you’re a parent of a teenager, you know that monitoring their activity can be a full time job in and of itself. There’s no feeling quite like the heart-stopping moment when your child doesn’t show up home from school, an after school job or an evening out with friends at the time they say they would. And if you are leading a busy life, you might not be there to greet them or make sure they make it home safely.

While cell phones can make the task of checking in with your adolescent easier, it’s not a failsafe way to prove that they’re home when they say they are. Smart garage doors use geofencing technology. To put it simply, it’s a predefined radius that will notify you whenever a user with a linked device enters that area.

For example, if you’ve entered your child’s cell phone into the app that controls the garage door and given it a name, you’ll receive a notification whenever that phone enters the predetermined radius around the garage. No more playing hooky from school, failing to show up on time after school activities or sneaking the family car out for a late night drive.

Keeping tabs isn’t just for teenagers. Caregivers for family members with developmental disabilities, mental illnesses and dementia can all benefit from the tracking notifications given by smart door technology, too.

04. Oversee Employee Activity

If you outsource some of your home maintenance activities to make your life easier, it can be tough to tell if your household helpers are flubbing their time sheets. Whether it’s your housekeeper, gardener, car maintenance attendant or dog walker, smart garage door technology will notify you when they show up and when they leave. That way, you’ll have an accurate record of their comings and goings to measure against their timesheets if something seems off.

But it’s not just about verifying activity. Smart door tech also enables you to let your household helpers in and out from wherever you are. So if your dog walker is running late, for example, he can text or call you when he shows up and have you open the door while you’re waiting in traffic on the way to the office.

05. Increase Home Security

The biggest, most obvious way smart garage doors make your life easier is the increase in your home security. You have notifications of who is coming and going, what times they entered and exited, as well as the ability to control your garage door from anywhere.

This real-time monitoring cuts down on the need to create excess keys and find creative places to hide keys for home maintenance workers or inconvenient lockouts. If you receive a notice of unauthorized activity, there’s no delay in calling the police to check on the situation — enabling a rapid response when it’s needed most. And say goodbye to the worry of forgetting to shut your garage door, or wondering if your family members didn’t secure it — you can double check that from your phone, too.

Smart Garage Door Benefits

Smart garage door technology paints a vivid picture of what’s going on at your largest, most-used home entrance. Armed with that kind of knowledge, you’ll have peace of mind knowing that your home is safer and easier to use. Garage door smart technology integrates with other smart home security automation features to provide you with a 24/7 real time picture of what is going on around your home.

BIO:

Adam Fogal is the CEO of Citywide Alarms based in St. Louis, Missouri. They have been in business since 2010 and partnered with Alarm.com. Citywide Alarms has been awarded Angie’s List “Super Service Award” for 2015 and 2016, retained a perfect A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, and a 5-Star rating on Yelp. Adam look forward to helping every family’s home safety.