Garage Door Won't Work? Check These Things Before Calling an Expert

There are many reasons why a garage door might not work. A lighting storm could have caused an electrical fault, dirt and grime could be interfering with your sensors, your door could be out of balance or your springs could be damaged. As you can already tell, the problems garage door professionals are equipped to deal with on a day to day basis can be quite diverse.

Your garage door is most likely the area of your property that gets the most use. You can trust it to last you many years without a hitch, but its components are bound to wear out over time. Regular maintenance will ensure you replace these before any damage occurs – and will help you prolong the door’s lifespan too.

We strongly advise against trying your hand at performing garage door repairs. Depending on the nature of your issues, the door could very easily collapse under stress – causing personal injury as well as incurring some costly property damage.

That being said, there are some things you can check before calling an expert. If you have a bit of DIY knowledge, and feel confident in your ability to inspect your garage door’s components, proceed with the steps to follow:

1. Test your opener remote

In many cases, the issue is as simple as replacing a remote control battery. Try opening and closing the door using the wall switch. If everything seems to working smoothly, test the transmitter you have for your car. If you own more than one of these devices, make sure to test both. Replacing the battery is something you can easily do yourself – depending on the remote control model, you may need a screw driver in order to do this. It’s always best to change the batteries of both remotes at the same time – you would have likely got them together, so their battery life span should be about the same.  

2. Look at your door’s manual lock function

Most garage doors will have manual locks, and it’s quite easy to activate these by mistake. You could knock the handle while moving things around your garage, for example. If you’re unable to open the door but you can hear the openers running, the door has likely been locked up manually. All you need to do is turn the handle, typically found in the middle of your door, until it makes a clicking sound.

3. Auditory checks as the door opens and closes

The best way to figure out whether you need to call a professional is to listen to the noises your garage door makes as you open and close it. We’re not talking minor squeaks here: those just tend to be a sign that your springs or cables might need a bit of oiling. Look out for noises that indicate your garage door is struggling to carry out its daily duties, like something is gnashing or rubbing along the wrong way.

- If you hear any usual noises coming from a closed door, you might have a broken torsion spring. These are notorious for making quite a racket while trying to release the tension from its damaged components.

4. Visual inspection of cables and springs 

Before we go any further, here’s a disclaimer. Unless you have the proper training, do not, under any circumstances, try to fix broken springs and cables yourself. Remember what we said about the garage door collapsing under stress? That tends to be particularly true when cables and springs are involved. You can check these visually for damage, though. Look at the bottom of your door’s roller bracket, paying close attention to broken strands, signs of wear, cracks and chips all around. Damaged roller brackets should only be replaced by qualified professionals.

Another visual check to do: look at whether there’s anything blocking the door’s path. This could be a garbage can, some toys, boxes, or anything that’s getting in the way of your door’s sensors. If you can’t see any signs of physical interference, look at whether the photo eye sensors need a bit of cleaning – built-up dirt and grime can affect their ability to function. Cleaning a photo eye sensor only requires some warm water and a streak-free cleaner (be gentle, you don’t want to scratch the glass while you’re cleaning these).

5. Maintenance checks you can do at home 

There are a few more checks you can, and should, do regularly in order to ensure everything is running smoothly. These include:

- Checking if your door is misaligned. Out of track doors can be quite dangerous to handle, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do a few quick-fire inspections. First, turn off your automatic opener and try to open the door manually (opening it about halfway should suffice). If the door feels unusually heavy or won’t stay in place, it’s likely out of balance. In some cases, you can simply tap it back to position – but in most situations, it is best to leave out of track doors to the repair pros.
- Realigning the photo eye sensors. These can become misaligned too. You can fix these yourself if they’re not too out of place, and you have access to a spirit level. Measure both sides from the ground to check if they are angled in the same position, and go from there.

Remember: if you don’t feel confident doing these checks yourself, a certified garage door repairs professional can easily do this for you. Just get in touch with a local business and request an inspection.

Never had to do this before? We can help with that too.

Hiring the right garage door repairs professional 

Finding the right professional for the job is not something to be rushed. Get a couple of recommendations from people you trust and call them up to get information about their services, warranties, business operations (knowing how long your repairs experts have been working in the area will give you a good idea of their reputation), licensing and insurance information, minimum callout charges and full cost breakdown for repairs. Never hire a business that requests full payments upfront (partial deposits are fine), and stay away from any company you can’t physically trace an address back to. If you have the time to spare, make sure to ask your technician for local client references, look up online reviews, and do a bit of background checking with your Better Business Bureau too.

Are you in Newnan, GA? The certified and field-tested crew at Newnan Garage Repair can help with your issues. Call us to inquire about our services and we will help you resolve whatever garage door woes that have come your way.