Garage door opener remotes use radio signals to communicate with the garage door opener. Check the cables to make sure both are intact, and replace them if one has snapped. The power of the garage door opener itself won’t be sufficient to lift the door on its own. If the suspension cables have snapped, the spring is no longer able to assist with opening the door, and the garage door will not open. This spring creates tension that helps to lift the door, and because a garage door can weigh hundreds of pounds, this additional help is necessary. The suspension cables on your garage door attach to the torsion spring that runs horizontally above the door. If your garage door is not opening and is more than 10 years old, it’s probably time to replace it. You should also inspect the pulleys, spring, cables, and track regularly to ensure that the garage door opens and closes smoothly. You can extend the life of a garage door opener by lubricating the door’s moving parts to reduce resistance so the opener doesn’t have to work as hard to open the door. Generally speaking, you can expect to get 10 to 15 years out of a garage door opener, depending on how well it’s maintained and how often you open and close the garage door. If your door is more than 15 years old, the garage door motor may be kaput. Installing a new torsion spring is a job for a qualified garage door technician, though-if the spring snaps off during installation, it can severely injure anyone near the door. Over time, torsion springs wear out and break, making the door too heavy for the opener to raise. When the door is lowered, the spring winds up tightly, creating a pulling force that helps lift the door up when you next open it. Many garage doors have a powerful torsion spring located horizontally above the door. The door should then lower easily, and you can reconnect the opener. When the door is fully open, use a mallet to lightly tap the bent side of the track back into alignment. It helps to have at least two people to do this. Still, you may be able to disconnect the opener (using the disconnect switch mentioned above) and raise the door by hand while maneuvering the rollers back into the tracks. This can happen if a track is accidentally struck by a heavy object and bent outward, allowing the door rollers to slip out. The opener won’t be able to lift the door if a roller on the garage door has come off one of the side tracks. If your garage door opens a little then stops, the problem may lie with the garage door track. Check that the garage door is set in its track. Newer models, on the other hand, have done away with the adjustment nut and adjust the pulling force automatically. By increasing the pulling force, the opener may be able to open the door again. A nut located on the opener-check your owner’s manual for the location, which varies by brand-can be turned with a wrench to increase the opener’s pulling power. Over time, that amount of force needs to be increased to compensate for damage to the rollers or the door tracks, either of which makes it difficult for the opener to lift the door. If your opener is more than 5 years old, it was most likely programmed to exert the specific amount of force needed to pull the garage door up. Wipe off the photo eye (it looks like a small lens about ¼ inch in diameter) with a soft rag, and then try to open the door again. The caveat: A dirty photo eye can keep the door from moving in either direction. If it senses something, it signals the door to stop closing-a wonderful safety feature that prevents the door from closing on pets or small children. The photo eye, a small sensor, hovers 4 to 8 inches above the floor on the inside of the garage door track to detect objects in the path of the garage door. If your garage door opener won’t work even after resetting the remote, you may need to replace it. It is, however, a relatively quick fix that involves pushing the buttons on the remote and on the keypad in a specific sequence. Because the procedure to reset the remote varies by manufacturer, you’ll need your owner’s manual. Is the garage door remote not working? If the door opens when you press the button on the wall-mounted control keypad but not when you use the remote, you might have just pinpointed the source of the problem.
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