Garage Door Keypad Installation for Dummies

wireless garage door keypad

Most of the staffers are no longer surprised by the blind spots in the freelance posts they turn up every day in the niche sites holding former eHow content. After all, they long ago decided that the site was the "mother lode of misinformation"; although we should note that most of them didn't spend much time looking at Helium.com, AssociatedContent.com, or many of the other now-defunct content farms. Still, it takes very little effort to find a post at a site such as HomeSteady.com that, like "How to Install a Garage Door Keypad"¹ by Heather Broeker, leaves a bit to be desired in the comprehension department.

Our first clue that the J-school grad was simply parroting information she'd picked up with a random Google search was a couple of lines in her step number 1:

"You will need to drill a pilot hole from the outside to the inside of the garage. You can use an electric drill; the hole should be ½ inch in size."

Three things caught our staffer's eye about that. In increasing order of wonderment, she notes that,

• It's really nice of Heather to allow us to use an electric drill.
• A half-inch hole sure is a pretty specific size.
• And last but not least, hasn't Broeker ever heard of a wireless keypad?

Sure enough, Heather pounded out some very specific instructions, including,

"Finally, on the control box snap the keypad plug into place. You are going to want to find a spot within the garage to mount the control box with the included screws."

Our guess is that Broeker found instructions somewhere for a wired keypad — of course you can buy wired keypads, although they're generally recommended only for new construction installation because fishing wire is a bit advanced for most of us. For an aftermarket installation, there are a wealth of low-cost wireless keypads available.
That's quite probably what the OQ wanted to do: slap a keypad on the wall of the garage so the kids could get in without a key. Since all that takes is a couple of screws, it's a near-certainty that the OQ was concerned more about programming the keypad, which Heather reduced to

"You will then need to program the keypad with your selected code."

Gee, thanks, Heather. For all your hard work, you certainly deserve a reward; which is why we're presenting you our Dumbass of the Day award. Enjoy.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_4924599_install-garage-door-keypad.html

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