Whether you’re heading out to work in the morning or driving back in the evening, nothing’s more frustrating than your garage door not working, as it got stuck when closing. You feel like smashing through the closed door! The good news is that your garage door has some in-built corrective mechanism that you can resort to before calling professionals for garage door repair. Many homeowners wonder, “How can I check my garage door if it’s not working?” If this question has been bugging you, follow these simple steps to assess garage door defects.
When you use the remote to find that the door doesn’t open or close, check to see if the door is in “Vacation” or “Lock” mode. When the garage door activates one of those modes, the remote may trigger it to open once, but you must unlock if from the wall’s control on the inside of the door.
Check the garage door’s remote battery
You can do this by pressing the open button as you approach the door. Focus your attention on the blinking red light located on the box at the garage door chain’s point of entry. If the door begins to open or close as you draw closer to the box, but refuses to respond as you back away from it, your remote battery may be low to the extent of needing replacement. If the red light on the box isn’t blinking, the remote battery is dead.
If you’re still under the box pressing the remote and the red light is blinking but the door doesn’t open, the battery is in perfect working condition, and the problem may be in the receiver of the box’s drive mechanism. After establishing that the remote is working perfectly, if you are still unable to open, go inside the garage to inspect the control box’s wiring. There are fine wires attached to the control box that run to the ceiling. You can notice them if you pay attention during garage door installation.
Two of the main wires you need to inspect run from the box to a manual switch attached to the wall, typically by the walk-in door. The other four wires you need to check run from the back of the control box to electric eye points a few inches off the floor, on either side of the door. While inspecting any of the two sets of wires, grab them a few paces away from their connection points with one hand as you press the remote button with the other. Wiggle each wire at a time while pressing the remote. If one of the connections is loose, the garage door should open or close as you do the exercise.
Note the wire and the switch of the power supply to the garage door
Using a screwdriver, tighten the loose wire and then turn the power back on. The door should now work normally. Inspect the door’s electric eye. While this feature usually fails when the door is open and isn’t closing, it can cause an error the other way round too. The two electric eyes on either side of the door work by aligning a beam across the floor at each other. If for instance the beam is interrupted and does not align, the door may not work at all. Clean both eyes using a soft tissue.
If upon cleaning the eyes, the door still doesn’t work, they may be misaligned. They should be pointing at each other in a perfect straight line. Their metal mounting may have bent accidentally. To fix this, you simply need to use your fingers to bend the small box back into position, depending on the degree of misalignment.
