In our experience as garage door repair professionals, there’s one thing you can count on: garage doors rarely break at an ideal time. Usually, it’s when you’re scrambling to get out the door early in the morning, or conversely, when you’ve come home after a hard day of work and you’re dog tired. What’s the most common garage door repair problem we run into? Easy. A stuck garage door. You push the button and the door gets stuck halfway. You can’t even get your car out.
Here are a few steps to identify the problem and find an easy solution. Most likely, this is a very fixable problem.
Determine if Ice is the Issue
One common reason for a stuck garage door is ice buildup. Fortunately, the fix is pretty simple. Pour hot water over the bottom of the door. Heating up a tea kettle works well. Hopefully this will loosen up the ice so your door can open again.
Check Your Remote Batteries & Power Supply to the Door
You’d be surprised how many calls we get on a broken garage door that just turn out to be battery issues. In fact, we’ve started carrying extra batteries in our emergency repair trucks for this very issue. Try replacing the batteries in your remote. If that doesn’t work, check the fuse box for any flipped fuses. Ensure the power supply is still connected to your garage door opener.
Try Opening the Garage Door by Hand
If all else fails, pull on the red cord hanging from your garage door opener. This will release the opener from the door so you can try to open it by hand. If the door opens manually, chances are the issue has something to do with your garage door opener and not the garage door itself. Run through your electric checklist again: batteries, fuse box, electric plug, and see if you’ve missed anything. If you hear a whirring from the motor but the door still isn’t opening, you might have a bad garage door opener motor.
Check the Tracks of Your Garage Door Opener
If all of the above doesn’t work, you might have a problem with your garage door tracks. Perhaps the door has skipped out of track. This can happen if the tracks are misaligned or start to come loose. Whatever you do, don’t try to force open the garage door. You could cause serious damage to either the door or the tracks. Then this fairly easy and inexpensive repair becomes several hundred dollars. Instead, find another way to get to work (Uber can be a godsend) and give us a call. We offer 24/7 emergency garage door service to Roseville and the greater Sacramento area. We’ll take care of the problem before you even come home.