Here are a few of the common problems of garage door openers and some possible causes. Keep in mind that this is only a rough troubleshooting guide, just for you to make yourself an idea of what may be broken or damaged. Each garage door opener manufacturer offers specific troubleshooting guides, which means that you need to see if your garage door opener is Genie, or Liftmaster, or Chamberlain, or whatever other brand, then seek for instructions from the respective company.

The garage door is moving without me touching the remote

If the garage door goes up and down at times, with nobody pushing the remote control buttons, it is possible that you have a short in your wiring. The first thing you could check is the wall button. If you’re lucky, the short is there, so all you have to do is replace it and your repair is done.

The garage door goes only in one direction by remote

If you can remotely open the door, but it closes only manually, you could check the infra-red sensors. It is possible that one of them has a malfunction and needs replacement.

The opener seems to be dead, the door doesn’t move

This can be a good one: check the batteries inside your remote control. This is a frequent incident many people go through, because these batteries have a very long lifetime, therefore we usually forget about them and don’t even think that they are the ones that make it possible to communicate with the garage door opener.

Here are a few considerations you may not have thought of when you went for a garage door repair each time something got broken.

Old garage doors are prone to making some strange noises, like rattling, therefore getting straight on your nerves each time you open and shut them. If you have a positive attitude towards this issue, think at your neighbors who need to endure this garage door violin concerto each time you need to use your car.

As beautiful and elegant as they are, wooden garage doors will inevitably crack, or warp (or both) in time and become misaligned, because the wood changes its size and shape thanks to bad weather conditions.

Rollers and tracks will wear with time and will probably get rusted. Replacing all these elements is a difficult attempt and it may be quite expensive, so you need to estimate at a point in time that you may be in advantage if you bought a new door instead of repairing the old one.

If you live in areas with periods of high humidity levels, your garage door will get sagging moldings which are almost impossible to eliminate completely. Mold is dangerous to health and it may trigger severe respiratory reactions in case of mold allergy sufferers.

When your door gets old and warped, the dust will enter in your garage through the cracks, or from under the door. If you live in a windy region, this could be very embarrassing, and you’ll always have a dirty car, despite the fact that you keep it in the garage.

Last but not least, technology is in continuous progress, new materials and building methods appear, and you may want to take advantage. For example, old doors were not as well insulated as modern ones. The R-value is the measure of the insulation level: the bigger the R-value, the netter your garage door insulation.

Look at your garage door and say is it can still be repaired or it’s time for a new one.

This is a brief guide of the garage door parts that may break, resulting in malfunctions:

Garage Door Springs Repair

There are two types of garage door springs: torsion springs and extension springs. Their role is to move the door when it opens and closes. You should never attempt to replace a broken torsion spring, because you expose yourself to a serious risk of getting maimed. The tension these springs accumulate is huge, and in order for the replacement to go on smoothly, special tools and exact knowledge of the steps to do are required. As far as I know, the last models of garage doors from Wayne Dalton and Clopay use another type of torsion springs, which can be tensioned with the help of an electric drill. This is probably safer than the old type, but in any case, replacing torsion springs is an operation which takes at least 6 hours, and which costs probably less than $100, so it’s your choice if you want to spend so much time and to risk your life for this amount of money you could save.

Extension springs can be replaced by do-it-yourself garage owners. As I found this extensive garage door repair springs replacement guide, I’m linking to it, so you can read it, because it makes no sense to write everything again. The author wrote it much better than I’ll ever be able to, so if you are interested, just click on the previous link.

Garage Door Openers Repair

The garage door opener is the mechanism which actually lifts the door, so you can enter and exit the garage. Its main part is an electric motor which is commanded through a button touch. This command button can be connected to the main power circuit of the house, or it can be on a battery-operated remote control which you’ll keep in your car and which communicates via radio or infrared waves with the motor. The electric motor is linked to a track-and-pulley system, which is in fact the thing that moves the door up and down or to the sides, depending on your door model. All garage door repair guides indicate that in case of malfunction you should first check the batteries of the remote unit, because it’s frequent to get discharged and because you have no warning signs to know that’s the problem.

Another thing that needs periodic check and maintenance is the garage door insulation. If it gets damaged, your door will still function, but your home will have too much of a temperature exchange with the outside environment, so you’ll have bigger electricity bills in winter and in summer. Garage door insulation can be replaced, there are special kits which you buy and you can install by yourself. This kind of repair is safe to do it yourself.