How to Garage Door Troubleshoot

If you have an electric garage door opener and you’re pressing the button, and it isn’t opening or closing correctly, take a look at the following six reasons why your garage door might be having some issues and learn how to garage door troubleshoot.

Your Tracks Are Out of Alignment

This one is probably one of the worst issues to have as you are probably going to need to spend a couple of bucks and hire someone to come out and fix it, so like a band-aid I am just going to yank this one off and get it over with. If you notice gaps between the rollers and rail this may be a sign that your garage door track is out of alignment. Unless you are an experienced professional, a garage door track is going to be pretty difficult to swap out on your own.

Broken Springs

If the transmitters are working and your garage door won’t go up, then your garage springs may be broken. Do not attempt to garage door troubleshoot this problem on your own as it can be very dangerous. Call an experienced garage door repair company and do not try to open your garage door until the problem is fixed.

Manual Lock

Okay, now that we got the bad ones out of the way the rest are pretty easy fixes. The third is that your manual lock has been engaged, this is the crossbar in the middle of your garage door that acts as an extra security measure and locks your garage door in place which means that even if someone hacks your garage door transmitter, this crossbar lock will keep your garage door sealed tight! The only problem is when you sometimes forget that you locked it the night before after you came home from that scary movie with your friends and you are sitting in the car in a rush to get to work the next day furiously clicking the garage door opener wondering why on earth the garage door isn’t opening!!! Then you feel silly for forgetting and even more foolish for being afraid in the first place.

Emergency Release

This one is super annoying, but it’s an easy fix. You know that little red or orange string hanging from the garage door opener motor in the middle of your garage? That thing is an emergency release, the purpose of it is that in case the motor does not have power and you need to get the door open, you can just pull that string, and it lets you manually open and closes the door. Don’t worry, reattaching the motor to the door is easy peasy lemon squeezy, just open the door all the way and reattach the hook on the door to the chain on the motor.

Problems With Your Laser

Busted or misaligned laser, this one can actually be a pretty big deal if it’s the former, not the latter because if it’s the latter you can just jiggle it a little bit and you are “Gucci” as the kids say. Your garage doors safety laser shoots a beam from one side of the garage door opening a few inches above the floor to the alternate side of the garage, and if anything interrupts that beam during the operation of the door, the motor will automatically stop and open the door. If there is debris in either side of the laser housing, it will cause an issue. If the laser is misaligned, it will also cause an issue, but both of these scenarios are easily remedied. However, if the laser is actually broken, then this will require someone with a little more skill, and you will probably need to hire an experienced garage door technician to come and replace your garage door laser.

Garage Door Motor

If your garage door motor gets unplugged from its power source, it’s usually a simple matter of plugging it back in, also super easy. Now if your garage door motor dies of old age, getting a new one is also going to be one of those things where you’re going to want to call an experienced technician to come out and replace it, sure it’s going to cost you, but it will be pretty easy you for you.

Are you running into some issues trying to garage door troubleshoot? If so, look no further than Modern Overhead Door, the #1 residential garage door supplier in Oshkosh, Wisconsin since 1984. Contact us for all of your overhead door installation needs.