The Best Way to Fix a Garage Door That Isn’t Opening or Closing
We have a steady stream of phone calls from homeowners who notice garage door issues. A question we hear all the time is, “My garage door won’t close with my remote. I have to hold the wall-mounted button down to get the door to close.” This is easily solved without a service call. We’re going to share the solution with you right now.
Safety Sensors
All new operators will now install safety sensors as a mandatory item. When you look at one, they’ll appear almost like tiny cameras mounted on each side of your garage door (on the inside). Adequate garage door installation of these photo eyes is 3-5 inches from the ground.
How They Work
The safety sensors send invisible beams over the opening to “talk” to the operator and give the go-ahead if it’s okay to close the door. To create this invisible beam, safety sensors need to point directly towards one another. A light on each of the sensors indicates whether they are in the correct position or not.
Why Your Garage Door Won’t Close
If the sensors aren’t properly aligned or the beam has damages, the sensor light will go off. Then, the garage door might make an attempt to go down, but it’ll come back up immediately. The garage door opener’s overhead light is also going to blink. The light will also disable any wireless keypads or remotes when communication gets lost.
The following steps will help you see if this is the problem.
• First, ensure there’s nothing blocking the door from closing.
• Then, hold down the wall mounted button located in the garage. This overrides the safety sensors. The button on the wall must have pressure on it until the door completely closes.
• This type of design forces the user to stay inside the garage. This way, you can see that absolutely nothing is blocking the way before closing the garage door.
This fix is just temporary. Let’s see how we can make this more of a term solution.
How to Solve Garage Opening Problems
If you can’t see that there’s anything blocking the door, make sure cobwebs or leaves aren’t stuck on the sensor. Such safety sensors are extremely sensitive and the smallest object is enough to cause issues. If the sensor lights are still not coming on after cleaning them, the sensors might have gotten bumped or kicked accidentally. To fix this issue, grab the misaligned sensors and push or pull them gently until the light returns to normal.
