Residents mystified after garage door openers stop working

Saint Charles - In a mysterious occurence, residents on one street in St. Charles County, Missouri have all had garage door openers stop working.

While radio frequency interference is often attributed to problems with electronics, no one can seem to identify the exact cause of why the garages on Westhampton View Court aren't working. The problem appears to be affecting five houses, all built between 2005 and 2008. According to St. Louis Today, the problem started the day after Christmas. "You'd see one of the neighbors pull up to the garage and get out of the car," said Gilbert Ballman. "Pretty soon we were asking each other, 'Are you having trouble with your garage door too?'" Residents rebooted their systems and changed out batteries, but to no avail. The homeowners all got together to try and troubleshoot the issue. Garage door openers operate on wireless signals, and the homeowners queried one another about Christmas gifts that might perhaps be causing interference, but no one had recently purchased any new electronics, other than one neighbor's TV. Electric supplies are reportedly operating correctly and no new antennas have reportedly been installed in the vicinity. Residents are puzzled. Even the brand isn't a common denominator. Most of the neighbors experiencing problems have Liftmaster openers, but one neighbor reportedly has another brand. One of the culprits is thought to be the frequency used. In 2005, when these garage door openers were manufactured, the remotes were set to operate on a 315 megahertz frequency, unlike current models which use multiple frequencies. In 2004 concerns emerged in relation to garage door openers after the military distributed a new radio system to roughly 125 bases; these radios used same frequency the one used by 90 percent of the remotely operated openers. However, in the case of the mysterious occurrence on Westhampton View Court, St. Louis Today reported the military radios operate on 390 MHz, as do the cellphone towers. However, if the frequency is the problem, residents say it'll be costly to fix due to the expenses associated with changing the frequency, because it involves replacing remotes, keyless entry, circuit boards, and the labor involved to make the repair. Resident Kathy Hoechstenbach says she's not willing to do it. "Paying $300 or $400 is ridiculous," she said. "It's not our fault, so it shouldn't be up to us to fix it." Is the St. Charles problem an indicator of a more widespread issue? In Nov. 2011 a large number of residents in one Hawaiian town experienced significant problems. KHON News 2 reported an entire neighborhood was struggling with their garage door openers. "This community here is 87 homes and I think well over 80 percent if not 90 percent of the homes are impacted here by this issue with the garage doors," said Kalawahine resident Richard Soo. However, in that situation the garage doors were 11-years-old. In Dec. 2011, another community experienced outages in Colorado and 40 homes are affected. In this situations experts told residents whatever the culprit is, it's large, reported 9 News. In 2010 residents in a Texas community had a garage door opener problem too. In that case WOAI News 4 reported one resident had a solution which entailed using some old speaker wires and constructing "old-fashioned rabbit ears." What is causing the St. Charles outages is not certain, especially since the homes are relatively new. From looks of it, problematic garage door openers may remain an issue for a time longer for local residents until the mystery is solved. "It's a weird, weird thing," St. Charles resident Joe Sullivan told St. Louis Today. "And the timing for it all to go haywire for everybody at the same time can't be coincidence, right?" In the meantime the Missouri neighborhood residents struggle with their garage door openers. The residents have filed complaints with the Federal Communications Commission, but there is no timetable on how long an investigation would take.