Check Your Garage Door Opener Remote’s Batteries

Check For Debris In Your Garage Door’s Tracks

When your garage door doesn’t open or close as smoothly as you would want it to, this is a great time to learn about maintaining the garage itself. Just like any other door in the house, the garage door needs regular cleaning and maintenance to keep performing correctly.

When looking at the back of the garage door, look within the tracks for any debris such as spider webs or other insect nests as these can build up and cause obstructions that you clearly don’t want in the end. By cleaning these out with a broom or other tools like a Swiffer, you can restore the door to working condition rather easily.

However, if while looking at the door, you notice anything out of place (such as a roller missing from the track or the track itself having skewed and warped metal), then it’s time to call an expert. Both of these are a sure sign of a garage door being misaligned or on the way to being misaligned. An unbalanced or misaligned door is considered “failed” and requires immediate attention at the risk of it collapsing completely.

Check The Garage Door Springs

The garage door springs are the lifeline of the garage door. Whether you have an automatic opener or a hand operated one, the garage springs are vital to its operation.

The garage door springs provide what is called “spring force” equal to the weight of the door itself. Basically, it keeps the door up and provides support for opening and closing it that would not be possible without them. When these fail, a number of different problems can arise and become almost immediately apparent.

The first issue to look out for is your door sliding up or down without you moving it yourself or hitting the button to. This is due to the spring not providing support correctly and makes the door slide on its own which is the complete opposite of what you want in a door. Beyond this, if the spring is failed, the garage door will often come to a thud when sliding it down at a quick speed. Again, this means there is no control on the door as it moves from one state to another and this is a major indicator that it is time to call a technician.

Another way to check for this is to look up at the springs from inside the garage and see if they are split in half or noticeably separated from the garage door cabling. If either of these are a factor, then this is another indicator that it’s time to grab the phone.

Replacing a garage door spring is one of the most technically involved aspects of garage door repair and one mess up can cause an even worse and more expensive problem for your home. Calling an technician for this occurrence is highly recommended and without hesitation.