A garage door stuck in the closed position may tempt you to crash through, but don’t let frustration get the better of you. Take a couple of minutes to troubleshoot some built-in safeties on your door that may block it from opening. Typical hotspots would be the battery, the wiring and the electric eye that prevents your door closing on pets — it can also avoid your door from opening. These basic checks can continue to keep the repairman away and save you big dollars.
Ensure the door is not in “Vacation” or “Lock” mode when it wo not respond to the remote from the exterior. When in one of these modes it may open once using the remote, then must be hardened from the wall control within the garagedoor.
Check the battery in your remote operator by walking into the garage holding it in your hand. Press the button as you see a small blinking red light on the box where the chain enters and exits. If the door opens as you get very near the box, but fails to start as you back away, the battery is low and needs to be replaced. When you can’t find any blinking red light whatsoever on top the box, the battery is dead.
Click the remote as you are standing beneath the box but can still see the top. If you’re able to see that the red light on top is blinking, it means that the battery is fine and that the problem exists somewhere else in the system.
Locate the fine wires that run away from the control box on the ground. There are lots of inspection factors, two run from the box into the manual switch on the wall — probably by the walk door, and four running from the rear of the box into the electric eye locations on both sides of the door a few inches away from the ground.
Hold the remote in 1 hand. Catch the wires a couple of inches back from their connection points with another hand. Wiggle the wires one by one while pressing the remote switch using another hand. If one of the wires is loose, when you wiggle it, then it will get the door to open. Explain the cable. Shut off the power to the garage door opener. Use a screwdriver to tighten the cable. Turn the power back and the door should open and close normally.
Examine the door’s electric eye. This feature normally only fails when the door is already open and won’t close, but some models won’t function either way. Just a few inches off the ground on one side of the track, you will find two small boxes that aim a beam throughout the ground at each other. If the beam is interrupted or won’t align, the door may not operate at all. Use a tissue to clean the electric eyes. The most frequently reason for this dilemma is a spider making a home in the eye, so if you are terrified of spiders, you might want to use something different to get him out of there.
Align the attention. If you’ve cleaned the eyes but the door still wo not budge, the eyes may be misaligned. The two eyes should be pointing directly at each other. They are generally mounted on thin bit of metal that will be accidentally bent. When it’s misaligned, you need to have the ability to see this. You can’t see the beam, but if you take the small box along with your fingers, you are able to bend it. Bend it a bit at a time, while clicking the remote until the door opens.