How Burglars Get Through Garage Doors
Most garage break-ins don't involve brute force or power tools. They involve a wire coat hanger, a gap at the top of the door, and about ten seconds. The emergency release cord that lets you open the door by hand during a power outage can be fished and pulled from outside if there's a gap big enough to slide a wire through. Once that cord is pulled, the door rolls up freely, no matter how locked your opener thinks it is. It's quiet, it's fast, and it leaves no broken glass or forced locks behind.
That's the method worth understanding first, because it's the most common one and the easiest to stop. But it's not the only way in.
Pulling, Prying, and Pounding on the Bottom Panel
Older doors without side locks can sometimes be pulled up a few inches at the bottom corner, enough to trip the sensor or slip a tool in to disengage the track. Doors that have swelled or warped from humidity, or whose tracks have loosened over a season of coastal wind, are easier to flex this way than a door in good working order.
Stolen Remotes and Old Codes
A garage remote left in an unlocked car, or a keypad code that was set once years ago and never changed, is a standing invitation. Anyone who's been in your car or had the code written down for a landscaper, contractor, or house sitter can walk right in long after they had a reason to be there.
The Side Door Nobody Thinks About
Many garages have a walk-in door to the yard or side of the house, and it's often the weakest lock on the property. Even a well-secured overhead door doesn't help much if that side door has a cheap knob lock and a hollow frame.
Why This Matters More in a Coastal Climate
Salt air corrodes exposed hardware faster than people expect, including the locking mechanisms on side-lock latches, deadbolts, and keypad housings. A latch that's seized up with rust often gets left unused rather than repaired, which quietly removes a layer of security. Humidity also swells wood-paneled and some steel doors enough that homeowners prop them slightly or stop bothering to fully lower them, which widens the gap at the bottom that a tool can exploit.
Hurricane season adds another twist: homes with wind-rated doors and reinforced tracks installed for storm compliance already have sturdier hardware than older doors, which is a security bonus most people don't think about. If your door was upgraded for wind load, ask whether the same upgrade included side locking bars, since many wind-rated kits do.
Habits and Hardware That Actually Stop This
- Block the emergency release from being fished. A simple shield or zip-tie trick (looping a zip tie through the release lever so it can't be pulled from outside, but still releases by hand from inside in a real outage) closes the most common entry point for under the cost of a service call.
- Install side locks or a slide bolt on older doors without them. This stops the door from being pried up even if the opener disengages.
- Change the keypad code seasonally, especially after any contractor, cleaner, or house sitter has had it, and after hurricane season when storm crews may have needed access.
- Never leave the remote in the car. A stolen remote paired with a known address is a far easier break-in than any physical forcing of the door.
- Upgrade to a rolling-code opener if yours is more than ten to fifteen years old. Older fixed-code openers can sometimes be captured by code-grabbing devices; rolling-code systems change the signal every time and are standard on current models.
- Keep the bottom seal and tracks maintained so the door closes flush with no gap. Warped panels and loose track bolts, common after a humid summer, make forcing easier even with good locks in place.
- Secure the side door to the garage with a real deadbolt, not just a knob lock, and make sure the frame isn't hollow or rotted from moisture.
- Add motion-activated lighting near the garage, since most of this kind of entry depends on not being seen or heard.
When to Call Cape Canaveral Garage Door
If your emergency release cord has an obvious gap above the door, your side locks are rusted shut, or your opener is old enough that you're not sure it uses rolling codes, those are worth addressing before they're tested. We handle Garage Door Opener Repair & Installation for homeowners wanting a current rolling-code system, and our Garage Door Maintenance visits cover exactly this kind of check: track alignment, seal condition, hardware corrosion, and whether your door is closing flush enough to resist prying. We serve homes and businesses across Cape Canaveral, Cocoa Beach, Merritt Island, Rockledge, Cocoa, Satellite Beach, Titusville, and Melbourne, and we show up on time to do the job right.
If you want a quick security check on your garage door before the next round of storms or house guests, call Cape Canaveral Garage Door today and we'll take a look.