Why Does My Garage Door Opener Only Work Occasionally?
While complete breakdowns are a major inconvenience as far as domestic garage doors are concerned, intermittent faults can be even more annoying, due to the fact the root cause is often more difficult to diagnose. To make your task easier, our Broomfield garage door repair team has prepared a short guide to intermittent garage door opener fault diagnosis. We hope it may prove useful to you.
Diagnosing Intermittent Garage Door Opener Faults
In our experience, there are four main causes of intermittent faults as far as garage door openers are concerned.
Power Interruptions
Poor connections in mains-powered systems and failing batteries in battery-powered systems are common causes of intermittent garage door opener faults. For this reason, we recommend you start your fault-finding with a careful inspection of the power source for your opening mechanism. If it is battery-operated, test the battery and see if it needs to be replaced. If it is mains powered, make sure the connection to your electricity supply is in good condition. Loose connections are responsible for millions of intermittent faults and the reason that many people are very familiar with their local garage door repair team. If the power supply seems to be fine, move on to the next possibility.
Sensor Faults
Every garage door installation that includes a remotely operated opening mechanism will also include safety sensors that are installed close to the ground, on either side of the door. A beam of infrared light from one sensor to the other confirms the absence of obstructions. If this beam of light is broken, however, this means there must be an obstruction: something in the path of the garage door that could either be damaged or cause damage itself if the door were to close. Sometimes, the presence of dirt on one of the sensors can mimic an obstruction, causing the door opener to fail intermittently. Sometimes the sensors may drift out of alignment but only far enough to produce occasion false positives. In either case, it is quite easy to rectify the issue.
Unidentified System Issues
In some cases, there is a fault with the opening system that simply cannot be diagnosed, no matter how many garage door repair experts are called or how much time is spent on the problem. In such cases, we recommend a fresh start: reset the garage door opener and see if it starts to behave itself. Most modern openers have a reset button that can be pressed to clear and reboot the system. If you try this and the issue remains, we suggest moving on to the final possibility in our intermittent fault checklist: remote control malfunctions.
Remote Malfunctions
Almost all of our garage door sales include a remote control and we would assume that this is the case in other parts of the country too. If you have a remote control that you use to open your garage door and you have exhausted all other possibilities, we suggest you take a look at it now. If you cannot see any obvious issues, it may still be worth reprogramming your remote to see if it makes any difference. We have come across a number of cases where intermittent faults were solved by taking this simple step.
Call Our Team for Garage Door Opener Repairs
If you still cannot diagnose or fix an intermittent garage door opener fault after reading this guide, please feel free to contact our garage door repair (Broomfield or Parker office) team for assistance. Alternatively, if you need a replacement door and you want to compare a few quotes, try searching for 'garage door installers near me and calling a few local firms.