The Australian Garage Door Association (AGDA) are lobbying government and running a public awareness campaign to dispel the “common misconceptions” about who is responsible for the safe construction, installation and operation of garage doors.

The President of AGDA, Mike Fraser said he would be lobbying to enforce full mandatory compliance to Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) standards for all parties involved in this area of construction.

“The responsibility does not fall on one party, it is in fact the responsibility of the installers, builders and designers of buildings to ensure compliance in relation to garage doors, not just manufacturers,” said Fraser.

Fraser recommends all parties in the industry to become familiar with relevant the standards for doors (as noted in the National Construction Code / Building Code of Australia for cyclonic wind areas) to ensure compliance to ANZ standards and avoid penalties.

These standards are cited as “AS/NZS 4505:2012 Garage doors and other large access doors”, and includes information that installers, builders and building designers need to have an understanding of, such as the loads that the doors apply to the buildings, and minimum performance requirements for structural loads applied to the substrate to which the door is affixed.

In addition to lobbying the government for non-compliance, the AGDA is calling for additional safety mechanisms in automated garage doors to be made mandatory. They also want to enforce secondary entrapment protection for automatically operated garage doors under ANZ regulations.

Currently the existing Standard for openers is cited as AS/NZS 60335-2-95:2012 “Household and similar electrical appliances – Safety – Part 2-95: Particular requirements for drives for vertically moving garage doors for residential use”.

According to the AGDA there is an immediate need for greater consumer protection on this issue and the Association wants the ANZ Standards to be upgraded to include mandatory primary and now secondary entrapment protection for garage doors.