While you should never attempt to fix your garage door by yourself, knowing some potential reasons behind why your garage door may be acting up can help you understand the severity of the issue so you can make a safe, simple adjustment or seek professional help sooner.
In the following post, we’ll give you a peek into the most common reasons homeowners’ garage doors don’t work according to plan.
1. There’s Something in the Way
If your garage door won’t close or begins to close but stops and reverses its direction, make sure that there aren’t any toys or tools in the garage door’s opening.
When something’s in the way, your garage door’s safety eyes that cast a beam from one side of the door opening to the other sense the obstacle and tell the door to remain open.
2. Your Door Remote is ‘Pocket Dialing’
If your garage door is opening and closing erratically, locate your opener remotes. If you keep your car transmitter tucked away or you have a keychain version, it could be that the button is getting accidentally pressed from the bottom of your bag.
3. Dead Transmitter Batteries
If you push your door remote and nothing happens, check the transmitter located on the side of the wall. If that transmitter is working, you just need to do a simple battery exchange in your handheld transmitter.
It’s wise to replace the batteries in all of your transmitters at the same time since they were likely all set up together.
4. The Disconnect Switch is Activated
Every modern garage door is built with a disconnect switch that enables homeowners to still use the door manually when the power goes out.
If your garage door’s motor is humming as if it were opening or closing but the door is staying put, it could be that the disconnect switch is on.
5. Misaligned Safety Eyes
Strange garage door behavior is often attributed to an issue with the safety sensors we mentioned in reason #1. As tiny parts located on the inner frame of your door’s structure, these sensors can easily lose their connection with one another.
Luckily, this part of your garage door’s system can be fixed by you. Check out Precision Door’s helpful video for a step-by-step walkthrough.
6. Broken Springs
Your garage door’s springs are a key part that’s ultimately responsible for transferring the motor’s power to move the door up or down.
When a spring breaks, your door will be stuck closed with no signs of budging. If you look up into your garage door, you should be able to see that the spring is broken.
7. The Door Limit Settings Need to Be Adjusted or Reset
A garage door’s limit settings inform the door of how far it needs to travel to accomplish one full closing or opening cycle.
As you can imagine, limit settings that are too high or low can definitely throw things off. For example, it could cause the door to think it’s reached an obstacle instead of the ground.
8. The Track is Out of Alignment
For your garage door to move swiftly from its ceiling safe keeping down to its full closing position, everything needs to line up perfectly.
If you see any gaps between the rollers and the rails, it’s likely that your garage door’s track is out of alignment. This fix requires prompt, professional assistance.
9. Your Opener is Malfunctioning
Your garage door’s opener is made up of many smaller parts. When your door persistently won’t open, even after swapping out transmitter batteries, it’s likely due to an issue with the opener.
10. The Door is Out of Balance
If your garage door wasn’t equipped with the proper springs, it may have been unbalanced from the start. As the door tries to operate out of balance, these inconsistencies become more pronounced.
Springs that are too strong can cause the door to slam shut, while those that aren’t strong enough may leave a gap at the bottom of the closing.
Seek the Help of a Professional to Restore Your Garage Door
As a piece of equipment backed by ample power and made up of reactionary parts, attempting to repair your garage door on your own is never wise. When seeking a trusted services provider, look for one that offers trained technicians whose work is backed by a limited lifetime guarantee.
With years of experience accumulated in the field, Precision Door of Delaware’s certified technicians are confident that they’ve seen and found a solution for nearly every garage door malfunction out there. Each time they expertly evaluate a garage door on the fritz, their archived experience is close at hand.
Need help today? Contact us and we’ll send one of our expert techs out in the same day or it’s free.
