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I argued against putting a motion sensor in a garage for years, but a job in Spokane changed my view.
I always told customers it was a bad idea because of temperature swings and critters setting it off. My standard line was, 'You'll get a false alarm the first cold night.' Then I did a full system for a new house build in Spokane last fall, and the homeowner really wanted one in his three-car garage for the tools he kept there. I finally agreed to try a newer dual-tech sensor, the kind that needs both heat and movement to trigger. We put it up high, pointed away from the big doors. He called me six months later to say it had worked perfectly, even through a cold snap that hit zero degrees. It never went off by mistake, and it did catch a guy trying the side door once. Now I see that with the right gear and placement, it's a solid layer of security. What's the longest you've gone before changing your mind on a standard practice like that?
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stone.sarah5mo ago
Yeah, dual-tech sensors are a total game changer for garages. I mean, the old single-tech ones were a nightmare with dust and temperature shifts. Getting that placement right, up high and angled away from the big door drafts, makes all the difference. Took me a while to come around too, but seeing them work through a real winter changes your mind fast.
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victor_butler502mo ago
Funny you mention that, @stone.sarah... I had a similar moment with outdoor lighting timers. Used to swear by mechanical timers for porch lights, said digital ones were too finicky. Then I got a call from a lady in Spokane who had the digital timer on her garage light, and she swore it never missed a beat even when the power flickered during a windstorm. Meanwhile my old mechanical ones would get stuck every few months and leave her in the dark. Took me a whole year to finally swap them out on my own house... little things like that dig in deep.
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