Why Your Garage Door Will Not Open: A Homeowner's Checklist

Start with the remote and the wall button

• Press the wall button inside the garage. If the door runs from the wall button but not the remote, the door and motor are fine and the fault is in the remote, its battery or the receiver.
• Change the remote's battery before assuming the worst. It is the single most common cause of a door that 'stopped working'.
• Try the second remote or the keypad. If one works and another does not, the problem is that remote.
• Check the opener's light. A unit that is completely dark with no sound may have lost power at the plug or at the distribution board.
• Listen for a single click with no movement. That is usually the capacitor or the control board rather than the motor itself, and it is often repairable.

Then the safety sensors

• A door that reverses immediately, or refuses to close, is usually stopping because the two safety eyes cannot see each other.
• Look at both eyes at the bottom of the track. Most have a small indicator light that should be steady, not flickering or dark.
• Wipe the lenses and check that nothing - a bin, a broom, a bag of potting soil - is between them.
• Sunlight and dirt cause more sensor faults than anything else. If one eye faces direct afternoon sun, a small shade is a legitimate fix.
• If the door closes while you hold the wall button but not on the remote, that is the sensor circuit, not the remote.

Then look at the door itself

• Is the door crooked? Look at the gap under the door on both sides while it is closed. One side lower means the door is out of balance and should not be run.
• Is anything in the track? A stone, a piece of packaging or a garden tool stops a door dead, and it is a two-minute find.
• Does the door feel impossibly heavy when you try to lift it by hand with the opener released? That points at the springs, and it means stop.
• Is there a grinding or scraping noise before it stops? That points at rollers, hinges or a bent track.
• Has the door been getting noisier for months? That is the warning that came before the failure, and it is worth telling the contractor.

The one part you must never touch

If the door is heavy and the springs look wrong - snapped, slack, or sitting at an odd angle - that is the end of your checklist. A garage-door torsion spring stores enough energy to cause a fatal injury when it releases, and there is no safe way for a homeowner to work on one. Do not wind it, unwind it, cut it, remove it, or ask for a spring to be supplied loose so you can fit it yourself. Leave the door alone, secure the house another way, and book a repair.

Getting the car out safely

• If the car is trapped and the garage has a second door, use it. It sounds obvious and it is often forgotten in the moment.
• If you must lift the door by hand, do it with help, on a door whose springs are intact, and only far enough to get the car out.
• Find the opener's manual release cord, usually a red handle hanging from the rail. Every adult in the house should know where it is.
• Do not force a crooked door down to secure the house. A door jammed halfway is harder to release than it was to close.
• Tell the contractor the car is trapped when you book. It changes how the job is routed.

Related

• Garage door repair Cape Town
• Garage door motors Cape Town
• Garage door automation Cape Town
• Springs and cables