Garage Door Stuck?
Check these common trouble spots
A stuck garage door can be a real stressor. What’s wrong with it? How much will it cost to repair? On and on it goes, but you don’t need to lose sleep over it.
There are a few things about a stuck or broken garage door you can diagnose on your own by taking a few minutes to check out a few moving parts.
A bent track has derailed one or more rollers
A quick look at the rollers on the stuck side of the garage door will tell you what you need to know.
If the rollers are off track or the track is bent or broken, then the rollers can’t follow the path for regular operation.
It may be possible to bend a track into the correct position, but this is better left to a professional.
If the rollers are off track or the track is bent, there could be an underlying issue that caused the malfunction.
A professional garage door repair technician will check the entire mechanism for potential problems and can safely repair the issue.
Broken torsion springs or cables.
A quick check of the springs, pulleys, and cables will tell what you need to know. To check for a broken torsion spring, look at the springs on either side of the drive mechanism. A broken torsion spring is easy to spot as it will have become separated from the chain, belt, or screw drive mechanism.
If you’ve broken a cable, it will probably become wrapped around its pulley or the roller bar. You will find the pulleys on the end of the roller bar above the garage door tracks.
A qualified garage door repair technician should repair either of these problems.
Torsion springs require specialized tools and knowledge and can cause serious injury if you don’t know what you’re doing.
The cables are not as difficult to repair or replace as the torsion springs. However, it might still be a good idea to have them fixed by a qualified garage door repair professional. The amount of tension required by the torsion spring to operate the garage door can be dangerous for average homeowners.
The manual garage door lock is engaged
Modern garage door manufacturers often build their openers with manual garage door locks.
Before the days of electric garage door openers, a homeowner had to turn an outside handle connected to a cable on the inside of the garage door. The cable connects to the manual lock on either side or on both sides of the garage door.
When someone turns the outside handle, the cable pulls the lock inward and away from the track. This frees the garage door so you can open it manually. Occasionally, this cable can become loose and allow the manual locks to become engaged.
Check the tracks to see if the locks have inadvertently engaged, causing the garage door to become stuck.
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