A garage door opener may just be one of the most one of the most neglected mechanical components in any household. It’s understandable, why would anyone pay any attention to these devices unless they are malfunctioning? Unfortunately, there’s likely to be a day where your garage door opener will give you a bit of trouble. No doubt, this can be frustrating to say the least.
With any luck the fix is simple, and we’re going to discuss some of the most common problems that people experience with their existing garage door openers. Sometimes that won’t fix the issue though, and the only choice you’ll be left with is to find a replacement. Before we go there though, let’s try some quick fixes.
Common Garage Door Opener Issues and Repairs
There are three very common repairs that come up with garage door openers. Luckily they are all fairly simple fixes. Let’s start with the most common:
Garage Door Won’t Close
If your garage door begins to close, gets pretty close to the bottom, then turns around and raises back up, then the most likely source of the issue is dirty or misaligned safety sensors. All garage door openers should be installed with safety sensors that prevent it from closing should something be blocking its path – be it a car, a ball, or (heaven forbid) a pet or a child. There are absolutely essential to the safe operation of a garage door, but if they get out of whack you can experience issues. Each sensor has a light that will be illuminated if it is seeing the other sensor properly. If you notice that the light is out or is flickering, you’ll likely need to clean the sensors or realign them until the lights stay illuminated.
Garage Door Closes All The Way, Then Opens
This problem is quite similar to the symptoms we just described, but the cause is slightly different. All garage doors should be equipped with a feature that if they feel resistance during travel, they turn around and go the other way. The reason is that if the sensors fail and an object begins to get squished between the moving door, the door won’t continue to push down and cause more damage. Likely what is happening is that the travel is set farther than the fully closed position of the garage door. As a result, the garage door opener thinks the ground is actually an object that it should not be squishing. Simply back off on the travel in the closed position and you should have the problem solved in no time.
The Garage Door Doesn’t Respond To The Remote
This is perhaps the most simple fix of all. If you press the button on your remote and the garage door opener doesn’t respond, then most likely the issue is that your garage door opener remote’s battery needs replacement. If that doesn’t fix it, you may well need to replace the battery in the garage door opener unit itself.
These simple fixes will take care of 90% of the problems you’re likely to encounter when using your garage door opener. If they don’t take care of it, you might want to consider calling a professional to take a look at it. This can be expensive though, and for the price you’ll pay you might be better off replacing the garage door all together.
Ben was born and raised in Bend, Oregon. Because of that, he is really enthusiastic about the outdoors and just loves every activity associated such as rock climbing, rafting, and skiing.
