This checklist will help you identify the reason why your garage door won t open all the way which in turn will reveal whether or not it s time to call in a professional garage door repair service.
Garage door will not open or close all the way.
Depending on the brand.
Close the door completely.
In order to figure out why your garage door.
One or more of these reasons is likely responsible for your garage door closing partially but not all the way.
Disengage the garage door.
From here lift the garage door by hand about 3 feet above the ground and then release the door and see were it lands.
Test the door manually.
There is one on each side of the door.
Secure the door if necessary.
If there s something blocking the door from closing all the way a full close will be impossible.
Something blocking the door.
So without the springs you might not be able to even open your garage door.
If your garage door won t close all the way the problem could be due to a blocked photo eye.
Though this problem should be obvious it shouldn t be overlooked.
Let s take a closer look 1.
The photo eye will be about 4 6 inches off of the ground for most doors with an eye that is about the size of a pea.
The majority of garage doors manufactured since the early 1990s are equipped with this safety feature.
They both have lights and both lights should be on.
If one of them is off or blinking it means the invisible beam that tells the opener that the way is.
Check the limit switch.
If your garage door is closing fully and then reversing to open again then it may be due to a problem with the close limit switch.
To check the balance pull the emergency release cord or chain to disconnect the door.
We mentioned that the springs are needed to balance the great weight of the door and make it easier to open and close the door.
Unplug the garage door opener.
The photo eye components consist of two pieces that align face to face across each side of the garage door roughly four feet above the ground.
But the springs that are part of your overall garage door system balance the door in two ways.
Most garage doors from the past 15 20 years have a photo eye which detects if a person or object is blocking the door from lowering all the way.
Clutter or obstructions that block the sensor are the first problems to look for if your door won t close or in extreme cases open at all.
If your garage door is not balanced right it won t go up or down all the way.
Garage door won t close all the way if the garage door opens correctly but fails to close completely there may be one of three common causes.
In order to fix this you ll want to make small changes to the close limit setting until the door opener knows to stop once the door has reached the floor.
Your garage door has set limit switches that instruct the motor when to stop running both when it is opening and when it is closing.