We open and close the garage door 1,500 times every year. Going back and forth from work, driving to the grocery store for food and visiting friends, the garage door not opening use becomes a center-point in the home.
When it starts to malfunction, it can throw a whole day out of balance. Problems with the garage door not opening most commonly happen in the winter months when power outages occur more frequently because of freezing rain, sleet and high winds.
The Reasons a Garage Door Won’t Open
When a garage door won’t open, one of several reasons could arise for it. You have a range of issues. For example, the garage door may only close part of the way, or it might open part of the way leaving you trapped inside.
It might require you to manually open it. Cherry Hill Garage Door in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, are garage door repair professionals who can assist you.
Let’s have a look at why the garage door won’t open and close. You have a multitude of reasons, and if you can’t pinpoint the reason, call a professional.
Garage Door Not Opening or Closing?
In some cases, the garage door may refuse to open and close because of a blocked or dirty photo-eye. Since the 1990s, garage doors have used the photo-eye as a safety feature for children.
Estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people get rushed to the emergency room every year for garage door injuries with dozens of young children dying.
For that reason, they added the photo-eye to prevent children from having the garage door close on them. It stops automatically before it can harm them.
The Photo-Eye Blocked or Dirty
Unfortunately, if the two eyes misalign or get blocked, they won’t work. You can clean the photo-eye yourself, but if the two eyes misalign, you want to call in the professionals.
Whenever the photo-eye detects an obstruction to the laser, it won’t garage door not opening closing.
It costs between $50 to $75 to fix the misaligned photo-eye. This pea-sized laser beam crosses the door to the other sensor.
When misaligned, they think an obstacle has interfered, which explains why they don’t open. Experts rank it as a mild problem, but you want to fix it with a professional because of his know-how.
Broken Garage Door Torsion Springs
The garage door may fail to respond to opening and closing because the torsion spring has broken. Never attempt to fix this yourself.
You need to call a garage door repair professional to fix broken torsion springs because the pressure behind them can kill or maim.
Most garage door springs today don’t pose a danger because they have a backing to hold them even if they break. Still, hire a professional who knows how to repair the springs.
Broken springs are a part of owning a garage door. Each spring receives a rating according to the maximum number of cycles for its lifetime. Replace the springs before they break.
This means to replace them every seven years with heavy use and replace them every 12 years with lighter use. Spray the garage door components twice a year with lubricant to lower the risk of breaking.
Broken Cables
Garage doors have more than a couple of dangerous parts that only a professional should work on. Springs pose a danger, but broken cables impose as much threat. The cables align with the tension springs to bring the garage door up and down.
When a cable breaks, the door won’t open. We don’t say close because if the cable snaps, the garage door will slam shut on the pavement with all 300 pounds of force.
It makes a thunderous crack, but the damage to the door could be the true misgivings here. Worse, anything in its path as it quickly slams shut could suffer a severe injury or even death.
Once the springs snap, the cables don’t last. If you have broken springs and you know it, don’t open the garage door until you replace them. Even raising it one time, the cables could break, causing further damage to your door.
Blocked Remote Signal
A dead battery in the remote can stop the door from opening, but a blocked remote signal can do this as well. If the door doesn’t open or close, check for obstacles to the signal.
You may need to move closer to the door. The average garage door remote opens within a 50-foot range.
Common obstacles that can interfere with the signal include tree branches and LED lights. LED lights have drivers inside them, which can scramble the signal. Garage doors have a signal between 28 and 360 MHz.
The two things have similar frequencies which can make one interfere with the other. To fix the problem, look near the antenna for dirt or interference with the signal. Call a professional if you see a broken antenna.
Misaligned Door
The metal tracks balance everything like the cable lift, operating mechanisms and spring tension. The garage door must stay straight on the tracks. Otherwise, it slows the movement.
More time passes and the garage door not opening. If you even sense that the garage door tracks have a misalignment, call a garage door repair specialist.
Major problem for garage doors, it can cause further damage that costs a lot to fix. With time, a misaligned garage door can worsen. Fix it as soon as possible to avoid costly damages.
The garage door serves as the most important part of the home because you exit and enter it multiple times per day. It’s the most technologically advanced part of the home.
When a garage door doesn’t open and close, everyday productivity grinds to a halt. Call a professional as soon as possible.