Question:
I am about to order the Wayne Dalton door model # 9100
I plan on doing the install myself. Any feedback will be appreciated.
Answer:
-I installed a pair of Wayne Dalton 8300 doors about a year ago. As Paul
mentioned, the instructions were good and the installation was fairly easy.
Our doors are 8' wide and I had no problem installing them by myself, even
lifting the sections into place by myself. It probably only took an hour or
two for each door (I didn't have to remove an old door, and the mounting
surfaces were already installed and ready to go).
Though not necessarily difficult, winding the torsion springs is a little
nerve wracking. I had read many horror stories about accidents occuring
while winding the springs. I took my time and used lots of caution and had
no problems whatsoever. Still, the winding bars tend to "wobble" in your
arms from the tension of the spring during the last several turns. Again,
it didn't take a lot of force to wind them, but the constant tension makes
one a little nervous... Ha. Ha. I kept three wrenches handy so that I was
sure to have a way to tighten the spring bolts if should happen to drop a
wrench. Be sure to use properly sized winding bars, not screwdrivers or
some other make shift tool!
In any case, I've been quite happy with the W/D doors. We do not have
garage door openers, and open the doors manually. They lift smoothly and
easily and seem to be rather quiet in operation.
I would certainly recommend Wayne Dalton garage doors based on my
experience.
-I had a new house built last year. The builder installed a Wayne Dalton
garage door opener. Turns out that the opener is not compatible with the
control built into my Honda. There's an after market fix, but it
eliminates the variable code shifting that comes with the opener as a
security measure. There's another fix made by a different manufacturer
that's supposed to retain the variable code feature, but I haven't tried
it yet. Also, it's a big garage and the opener is only rated for a 60
watt bulb--very dim. The opener works fine, but there may be other
openers that work just as well without these issues.
