Garage Door and Gate: One Remote Instead of a Drawer Full

From Wantirna South to Box Hill North, plenty of homes end up with a remote for the garage, another for the front gate, a wall button in the garage and two or three mystery remotes in the kitchen drawer that nobody can identify. It works, more or less, until someone grabs the wrong one on a wet night and sits in the car pressing a button that doesn’t open anything.

If you’ve got an automatic garage door and an automatic gate, it’s often possible to run both from the same remote. Whether it suits your place depends on the equipment you have, so here’s what’s worth knowing before you ring around.

How the pile of remotes builds up

Gates and garage doors often get automated at different times. The garage opener might have come with the house, and the gate motor added years later by a different installer. Each came with its own remotes, and each household member got one of each. Add the remotes the previous owners left behind and the spares bought after one went missing, and it’s easy to lose count.

That’s more than a clutter problem. Every remote that’s still programmed to your opener is a way into your garage or driveway. If you can’t say where they all are, you can’t be sure who has access. So the first step in tidying things up is an honest count: which remotes do you use, which ones work, and which ones are unaccounted for?

Once you know that, you can decide what you want the setup to look like. For most families it’s one remote per driver that does both the gate and the garage, plus whatever suits the people who don’t drive.

Two ways to run both from one remote

If both openers are Merlin and both are on the compatibility list for the remote you’re considering, a multi-button remote is usually the simplest answer. Our remotes and accessories page lists the Merlin E975M four-button remote, and its product page describes it as a fit for homes with more than one garage door or gate opener, with four programmable buttons. The page lists the specific Merlin gate and garage models it’s matched to, and it mentions opener age as well, so check with us for your exact model.

The instructions on our Merlin remote programming page explain that the extra buttons on Merlin four-button remotes can be programmed to other devices, such as additional garage door openers, light controls or gate operators. In practice, one button opens the garage and another opens the gate.

A tip that saves arguments: set every remote in the house up the same way. If button one is the garage and button two is the gate on Dad’s remote, make it the same on everyone else’s. Mix them up and sooner or later someone opens the gate when they meant the garage.

Before you buy, check both opener model numbers against the product page. If one of them isn’t listed, or you’re not sure what you’ve got, ask us first rather than finding out after it arrives.

Things get less straightforward when the gate and garage openers aren’t part of the same system. One might be older, or simply not compatible with the remotes the other one uses. Our gate opener FAQ covers this: we can fit a receiver to either your garage door or your gate opener so both work off the same remote controls.

Which opener gets the receiver, and whether it’s the right approach at all, depends on the equipment and how it’s installed. That’s something we’d look at on site. Fitting a receiver involves connecting it to the opener, so it’s a job for a technician, not a weekend project. If you’re also thinking about replacing an ageing gate motor, our automatic gate opener page is a good place to start, and it may make sense to plan the remotes and the new opener together.

Keypads, wall buttons and your phone

Remotes aren’t the only way to cut down the clutter. Merlin wireless keypads let people open the garage or gate with a PIN, which suits kids and regular visitors who don’t need a remote. Check the product page for the exact keypad, though. The E850M page, for example, says it controls one gate or garage door opener, so you’d need to decide which one it’s for.

Inside the garage, a wireless wall control can handle more than the door. The Merlin E148M is a four-button wireless wall mount remote, and it’s listed on our gate opener page as well as with our remotes. Check the compatibility details for your openers before buying.

Then there’s myQ. We sell a myQ Connectivity Bundle for current Merlin garage door openers and a Merlin gate myQ connectivity kit. Phone control for a gate depends on the gate opener, so don’t assume it. If phone access to both matters to you, check with us for your exact model when we talk through your options.

Using one remote safely

Having the gate and the garage on one remote makes it easy to set both moving at once. Only operate either one when you can see it clearly, and keep watching until it has fully stopped. Be extra careful when kids, pets or bikes are on the driveway, and never let children play with remotes.

Once you’ve settled on the remotes you’re keeping, get the old ones out of circulation. Ask us how to set up the opener so that only the remotes you want still work, which is far tidier than hoping the missing ones never turn up.

If you’d like to get your gate and garage door running off fewer remotes, send us an enquiry with both opener models and we’ll talk you through what will work.