Sigh, life is full of irritating little events that pose as concerns until they are solved, and we hobble along until the next one erupts. For us it was the surprise that one of the electronic/automatic garage door openers had decided to default on the contract of dependency we had with it. Suddenly it uncourteously refused to respond to the hand-held device that instructs it to open and close. It had been balky over the period of a week or so, back when we were experiencing some really icy-cold weather. And we were now in a period of January thaw, with milder temperatures prevailing.

Last time my husband attempted to close the garage door, he looked up to see smoke rising from the site of the device itself located on the garage ceiling; always an ominous sign. He gathered a few tools from his workshop and managed to get the cover off, and then gazed in amazement at the board within with its intricate computerized system completely covered in moisture. Somehow, he reasoned, water had gotten into the works and fouled things up.

He attributed it to the fact that we now had tightly-fitting garage doors. So that when the car was driven into the garage and the hot engine sent its warmth up to the ceiling of the garage it impacted on the opener, and then froze as the heat dissipated and the cold air once again dominated. Causing, in the milder temperature, the ice to invade the opener and fill it with moisture.

He tried fiddling with the device, tried to dry everything, to determine whether that would help. And then he called the manufacturer's help line. Moisture, the other end quizzed; don't think so. And then something about a capacitor that probably exploded, sending the light oil everywhere. The light still didn't quite dawn, and it was decided by my do-it-yourself-husband to finally seek the help of the experts.

He called a professional garage door specialist whom we had on previous occasions perform some work for us; replacing that taut, heavy, giant garage-door spring, for example. Calibrating a newly-installed garage door opener that refused to work, until it finally did. Over he came, with an assistant, recommending the opener be replaced for a new one rather than simply replacing the capacitor. It took them working in tandem an hour to do the work. Work that would have taken my husband a full day or more to complete, in huge discomfort working in a freezing garage.

What's more, they installed a opener that was of a higher calibre quality than the one being replaced. And charged the very same that it would have cost to buy another one retail, plus all their labour. The added bonus; adjustment to the garage door so it wouldn't thump down as heavily as it did. The expert theorized that this was the fount of the problem; the garage door coming down too heavily, sealing too tightly, so that in inclement weather (freezing rain; frigid overnight temperatures), the bottom froze, meaning that the automatic door opener had to struggle too hard to fee and to lift it.

That struggle ended in the capacitor exploding, sending light oil everywhere appearing as though it was water, which it wasn't. The new opener that had just been installed was designed to stop if it encountered such strong resistance.