When C.G. Johnson invented the first electric garage door opener in 1926 in Hartford Indiana, it must’ve seemed like a little bit of magic. But electric garage door openers only became popular after World War II, when the Era Meter Company of Chicago invented a garage door opener activated by a switch inside the garage or a key panel outside.
Years later, of course, the ability to open or close an electric garage door shrunk to a small remote control that could fit on a keychain along with your car keys. People love the convenience of automatic garage doors. Regulations have been put in place to ensure they are up to the latest safety standards and will function well for long after their installation.
On January 1, 1993, the federal government passed a law that mandated any garage door installed after that date needed to include sensors that would prevent accidents such as the door closing when someone was standing beneath it. Since that date, all garage door openers include door sensors that, once activated, prevent the door from closing until all obstructions are out of the way.
We’ll spend a little more time below talking about how garage door sensors work and what’s happening when they don’t work properly. But first, let’s take a longer look at how automatic garage door openers operate.
The secret to automatic garage door openers is a radio transmitter. Early garage door openers used very simple transmitters and receivers. While it helped to open and close your garage door, it also meant you could open and close any garage door in the neighborhood that also happened to have a similar system. This, of course, led to many humorous moments in TV shows or commercials where somebody accidentally picks up the remote control for the automatic door opener thinking it’s a TV remote, pushes a button and opens their neighbor’s garage door.
These days, garage door openers are radios that work at 350 MHz. When you push the button to open your garage door, it not only transmits a radio signal, but that radio signal also includes an encoded binary number that solely works with the receiver in your garage. Your door will only open once your receiver “recognizes” your binary code number.
But criminals are tricky. Smart ones could use a radio to pick up the code, record it and then play it back outside your garage door to open it and rob you. Fortunately, the people who manufacture garage doors are smarter than the criminals. Each time you use a garage door opener, a new code is created. Both the transmitter and the receiver contain computer chips that recognize the new code each time.
What Are Some Reasons My Garage Door Opener May Not Work?
When you pull up in your car and press your automatic garage door opener, you expect it to work. But what happens when it doesn’t? There are a number of reasons for this possible frustrating failure.
Old Age of the Garage Door Opener
Father time is undefeated, whether you are talking about humans or garage door openers. You can count on about 15,000 operations from a garage door opener before it goes to that great big garage door opener home in the sky.
Most people use their garage door openers about 1,500 times a year, so that means you can expect a good 10 years before any problems caused strictly by aging arise. Like you would with an old car, you can make some fixes to your garage door to keep it going for another few years, but also as would happen with an older car, you should expect to make more costly tweaks and fixes as time goes by.
Bad Batteries for the Garage Door Opener
In some cases, the reason your garage door isn’t working properly comes down to the simplest of explanations — you need new batteries. If your batteries are dead, your transmitter will still work. A good way to check this is to see if the transmitter installed on the inside of the garage still opens the door. If it does, install new batteries in the remote right away. If you press the transmitter and this time it works, problem solved.
Track Not Aligned for the Garage Door Opener
This can be a serious issue. Your door needs to run on a properly aligned metal track to open and close. If gaps between the rollers and the rail develop or the rails bends, this could lead to a difficult and potentially dangerous situation. Although there are more than a few YouTube videos available on the internet that can show you a DIY solution, this is probably a case where you should contact someone familiar with how automatic garage door openers work to come and fix it.
What Are Garage Door Sensors and How Do They Work?
Another reason your garage door may not open is your garage door sensors are malfunctioning. Before we talk about the reasons why it happens and how you can try to fix a garage door sensor, let’s look at how garage door sensors work. The sensors of garage doors have two essential elements:
Photo-eye: Garage door sensors work with the use of a photo eye system. These infrared sensors are placed on either side of your garage door about two to six inches off the ground. When you press the remote control you use to open your garage door, it sends a signal to the sensors to open the door. But the main purpose of the photo eyes is to prevent the door from closing on someone or something.
The line of sight: The photo eyes on either side of your door send an infrared beam to each other when the door is open and there is nothing blocking it. The door will only close if the beam remains uninterrupted. But if a person, an animal or a bike is in the way, and the beam is interrupted or blocked, the door will not close but will reopen.
How Do I Determine If It’s a Problem With the Garage Door Sensor?
If your garage door opens normally but then doesn’t close or starts to close and then reopens without any obstructions in the way, there’s a good chance that your garage door sensor is malfunctioning. This could result in two main problems.
The first is that the door won’t close. This issue can arise from a malfunctioning garage door sensor. Press the remote control or hit the electrical switch on the inside of the garage to close the door. If the door starts to close but then stops and reverses so that is completely open again, you know there’s a malfunction.
The second issue occurs when the door closes even with obstruction. This is the other sign of a possibly malfunctioning door sensor, and it’s a much worse problem because there’s a possibility it could cause an injury or significantly damage your car or some other piece of equipment. To determine if the sensors are malfunctioning:
Determine how high your photo eyes are above the ground. Once you figure this out, you need to get a few cardboard boxes that are higher than the sensors.
Place one of the cardboard boxes in the garage doorway. Make sure the box is also placed in front of one of the photo eyes. Press the remote control button to close the door. If the garage sensor is working properly, the door will stop closing and go back to the open position. If the garage door does not stop closing and crushes the box, then your garage door sensor is malfunctioning.
How Do You Repair Garage Door Opener Sensors?
After you’ve determined that your garage door sensor is not working for either of the above reasons, there are simple tweaks you can make to fix your sensor. If you are wondering how to fix your garage door sensor, try these two ways to fix your garage sensors:
Dirty lenses: This is most likely the reason a garage door won’t close. The most obvious solution to the problem may be the lenses are dirty. These lenses are made of glass, much like that used in a camera lens. The photo eyes of door sensors are very small and get dirty easily over time. Use a soft cloth with a mild cleaner that does not leave streaks. Gently wipe away dirt or residue from the surface of the eye. Don’t overdo it, because if you get the eye too wet, more dirt will stick to it.
Out of alignment: Misaligned photo eyes are another reason for malfunctioning garage door sensors. The photo eyes need to be pointed in the same direction, at the very same angle. There is an LED light on the exterior of each sensor. If one of these lights is blinking, it means the sensor is out of alignment. Use a screwdriver to tighten the screws on the bracket holding up the blinking LED light until it is in alignment with the other one. You can also do this by bending the bracket back into its original position. Once you realign the sensor lights, the blinking will stop.
Now it’s time to test your handiwork. Take another cardboard box and put it in front of one of the photo eyes. Press the remote control. If the door starts to close but then reopens because the beam between the realigned photo eyes is now blocked, your mission is successful. If, however, the door continues to close and once again crushes the new cardboard box, you may have a more serious problem.
Check one more time to make sure you have cleaned the lenses properly, the photo eyes are aligned and no LED light is blinking. Try the cardboard test one last time. If the door fails to return to the open position and closes on the cardboard box, it’s time to call in a professional to have a look at the entire system.
Garage Door Opener Not Working in Cold Weather
It’s always possible your issue could be weather-related. If it is icy out, the lining of your garage door may be frozen and that is why the door isn’t going up. Or there could be condensation on your sensors obstructing their utility.
How To Disable a Garage Door Safety Sensor
Until you get your garage door safety sensor working, you may want to disable it until professional help arrives to ensure nothing gets damaged. You can gently twist one, so the sensors do not line up, which will temporarily disable the sensor. You may not want to try anything more in-depth until you have professional help, as you don’t want to damage the system permanently.
Why Should I Call a Professional for My Garage Door Safety Sensors?
The reason we recommend working with a professional if your door sensors are still malfunctioning after the measures taken above is that you could have a problem with the wiring. Anything involving electricity or wiring should always be left to a professional for safety reasons and because further damage can occur if done incorrectly.
It is not impossible for you to do a DIY project of this nature. But wiring can be very tricky and, as you know, potentially dangerous. A garage door professional has the experience and knowledge of working with many different types of systems and has the tools and equipment needed to fix the problem. They will also be able to look at the rest of your garage door system and see if there are any other fixes necessary in order for your door to operate correctly again.
When in doubt, it is better to call a professional when your garage door sensor is not working. In addition to fixing your senor, a garage door professional will also be able to tell you if the problem is beyond fixing and if it would be better for you to get a new garage door.
Cornwell Door Service Can Help Fix Your Garage Door Problems or Install a New One
For the past four decades, Cornwell Door Service has been serving the automatic door needs of the south-central Pennsylvania area. A family-owned business, we rely on solid customer relationships and we treat each customer with the individual attention they deserve.
Since our founding in 1972, we’ve installed over 130,000 garage doors on residential and commercial buildings. Some of the reasons for that track record of success include our fair prices, the quality of the work we do, and the excellent service each of our customers receive.
Whether you’re talking to one of our management team, our customer service personnel or one of our installers, we promise you will receive the very best service until you are completely satisfied.
You can call us at 800-820-9841, or you can request an estimate, and a member of our experienced team will get back to you as soon as possible. If you’re already a customer and you want to schedule an appointment, visit our scheduling page so we can determine how we can help you and when we can visit you. We look forward to assisting you with your garage door issues.
