LESLIE: Laurie, you’ve got The Money Pit. How can we help you today?
LAURIE: We have a ¼-horsepower Chamberlain garage-door opener and it has no remote.
TOM: OK.
LAURIE: We bought the house as-is, so we have no remote for it. Also, it has a keypad on the outside, which I’m unable to use. So, my question was: if I go to Home Depot or Lowe’s, would a universal remote work or do I have to call a garage-door company out to sell us a Chamberlain remote and program it?
TOM: Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you get the model number of the Chamberlain garage-door opener, which is probably printed on the back of the unit, go to the Chamberlain website and get the owner’s manual for the door opener? With that owner’s manual, you should be able to program the keypad. It’ll tell you the right sequence to do that. And also, you most likely can find out from Chamberlain exactly which remote is designed to work with that unit.
Now, Chamberlain is a very good company and in fact, they have a new technology that’s called MyQ. And the cool thing about Chamberlain MyQ technology is you can actually put this MyQ unit in your garage and then you’ll be able to open and close your garage door with your smartphone. So, they’re way ahead of the game on this stuff.
LAURIE: Yeah. That’s what I was going to ask you, too. Is this one too old to do that?
TOM: I think it actually works on every garage-door opener that was built after 1996, so it may not be. It might be fine.
LESLIE: Can’t remember if it’s ’96 or ’94.
TOM: Yeah, it goes back over 10 years.
LAURIE: Good. OK. Because this one is about six years old.
TOM: I think that’s how I would proceed. I would not just go buy something and hope it works. I would do the research and you’ll figure it out. OK, Laurie?
LAURIE: OK. I’ll go on their web page. Thank you for the advice.
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