It’s not uncommon considering the amount of daily use it gets for your garage door to need maintenance or repair. Different types of issues can arise from parts like the springs or the electrical system. For instance, your garage door won’t open manually, or it gets stuck open and won’t close.
If you don’t feel confident in repairing your garage door opener there are many trusted businesses that do offer repairs, but if you want to brave the DIY route here are a few issues you can fix yourself.
The Garage Door Won’t Open Manually
In many cases this is primarily due to broken or failing springs. This also isn’t limited to one type of spring either, this can occur in both garage doors opening systems that have torsion or extension spring systems.
To resolve this, replace the according spring with a new one. Make sure when you’re purchasing a new one that it’s the proper size; springs that are too small will make the door hard to open and springs that are too large will make it hard to close.
The Garage Door Opens a Little Then Immediately Closes
Usually, the culprits of this are the springs at the very top of the garage door. You may only need to replace the broken ones if you’ve already replaced these springs in the last three years.
That being said, it’s typically best practice to replace all the necessary springs at once to reduce costs.
The Garage Door Opener or Operator Doesn’t Seem to Respond
Photo-eyes are small sensors many garage doors have to prevent the door from trying to close itself on some kind of obstruction, whether that’s a person, car, or otherwise. They are most commonly located on both sides of the door to be able to stop the door at the right time.
These photo-eyes could also be why the door doesn’t respond. If they don’t have their usual colour light on that they should turn the breaker for the photo-eyes off and on once to see if it turns on. If not, check to see if the plug/outlet is working properly to see if the issue is there.
Hopefully your garage door is back in order now and you’re equipped to handle common issues and fix them.