3 Reasons Why Your Garage Door May Be Malfunctioning

Posted on: 25 April 2017

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Do you have a garage door that's acting strangely? Do you think that you're going to have to replace the entire mechanism? While the actual motor can sometimes be the issue with a finicky garage door, there may be other factors at work. Since completely replacing your whole garage door assembly can be costly, there are some things that you should check out before you make plans to do this. A few things to look into include:

Replacing batteries: The batteries in the remotes for garage door openers can last for so long that it's easy to forget when you last replaced them. For best results, you should probably replace the batteries at least once a year, even if this doesn't seem to be necessary. Obviously, when the battery gets low, the remote will be unable to put out the power that it used to, requiring you to get closer and closer for it to trigger. However, sometimes, a low battery can also trigger a garage door to open or to close even if you haven't pressed the button. If your garage door is opening at random times, try replacing the batteries first to see if that resolves the situation.

Check out the neighborhood: Garage door openers use a relatively narrow frequency to transmit the open or close signal. If your garage door has started opening at random times, it's possible that one of your neighbors has purchased the same model of garage door opener and has a remote that's strong enough to trigger yours to open. Drive down the street behind you and try your garage door remote. If you see a door opening, you'll need to call a garage door professional out to switch the frequency that your opener and your remote use so that you're no longer accidentally opening each other's garages.

Clean the sensors: In order to prevent a garage door from closing on an unsuspecting child, pet, or inanimate object, garage door openers often include an optical sensor. An invisible beam of light is sent across your garage door opening. If something breaks that beam, even if it's just a bouncing ball, the garage door will refuse to close. These sensors can get dirty or covered in cobwebs, so it's important to check them and clean them every so often. If cleaning has no effect, they may need to be realigned. Call in a garage door professional like https://raynordoor.com/ and he or she will be able to take care of that for you quickly