Garage doors, especially those connected to openers, are easily affected by things you may have never considered. If your garage door is currently having problems opening and closing, you may want to check for the following situations. Any one of these three things can affect how well your garage door works or does not work!
Misaligned Infrared Laser
Many garage door openers have infrared lasers at the very bottom of the door frame. These are meant to be used as a safety feature. Any time the door is in motion but something interrupts the little red laser beam, it triggers a stop and reverse mechanism in the opener. If the infrared light is out of alignment with its receiver, then your garage door will refuse to close. This is an easy fix, since a screwdriver can help move the two components of this part of the system back into alignment with each other. You will know it is fixed when the laser receiver's light lights up red because the laser is interrupted by your hand. The receiver's light turns off when the laser makes contact with it again.
The Garage Door Itself Is Bent/Dented
Many garage doors are made of lightweight steel or aluminum. The doors are often separated horizontally into panels and supported by bars on the back of the door. If and when the panels themselves are badly bent or dented, the garage door may not lift and fold as it should along the panel's fold lines. If you can, you may be able to fix this yourself by tapping out the bent or dented area with a rubber-headed mallet. If the dent is rather large (as is the case when your teenager tried to drive through the closed garage door), then you will probably need some professional help.
Banged-Up Framework
Garage doors, like any other door, are connected to a pre-built frame. When your garage door is closed, this frame holds the door in place. If the door is banged-up or dented in due to an unfortunate little driving accident, then your garage door cannot slide down and fit into its own frame. It will only come down as far as the top of the damaged area of the frame and then get stuck. Unless you have the construction skills, you may just want to call garage door repair services to fix this, or you may never get your garage door to close again.
Share11 January 2016
I thought the most difficult part of teaching my son how to drive would be out on the roads, but I didn't think about what he could do to my garage door before he even left the driveway. It took one small tap with the car to damage the garage door. Even though the garage door itself looked to be fine, the impact had caused some damage to the mechanical components, and we couldn't use the garage for a while. My blog explains what we had to do to make the repairs and will give you some tips for avoiding this type of accident around your home.
