What To Do If You Can’t Open Your Garage Door
You count on your garage door each and every day. It’s the one thing that stands between your valuable vehicles and the elements, and the one thing that can be moved to allow your car access to the outside world. So when it doesn’t open with your conventional control methods, it sure can be frustrating! Nobody likes their day-to-day routine grinding to a halt.
We are here to help. If you find your garage door firmly glued to the ground, one of the first steps is usually to call us for personalized help—but until we get there, here are a few tips to get day-to-day goings-on back on track again and keep your family safe while doing it.
Determine The Severity Of The Issue
Of course, you don’t need to run comprehensive diagnostics! As garage door installation experts, that’s our job. However, knowing how “bad” the issue is is going to help determine your next course of action—if you need to remove people from the area or not.
A garage door track issue or a broken garage door spring, for example, probably require that you stay far away, but a bum garage door remote that needs replacement can easily be worked around.
Check for Human Error Before Calling for Garage Door Repair
Garage door technology has advanced wildly in recent years. Check out our blog on merging your garage door with your smart tech, “Two Great Garage Door Features for Your Automated Home.” That being said, no machine is infallible, and simple human error can lead to a variety of garage door “issues.”
Take, for example, misadjusted garage door opener sensitivity. It’s a common issue in newer garage doors that haven’t been properly installed, and an easy fix for a garage door professional, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less annoying! The result of a garage door opener that hasn’t been properly “synced” with the weight of the door it’s supposed to open, it can result in the door staying firmly anchored to the ground.
While you might not be able to tell the full extent of what’s wrong with your garage door, the moral of the story is that when it comes to garage door problems, it’s helpful to check for simple human error before calling for repair. Is something like a tree, for example, blocking the signal between your remote and the opener? Has the motor been accidentally deactivated by a pull of the emergency cord?
What Do Severe Issues Look Like?
As we stated above, they generally consist of something physical—a broken spring, cable, etcetera. If you see something hanging out where it shouldn’t, or if your garage door is obviously lurching off of its tracks, it’s common sense that you’d hightail it out of there!
But it’s sometimes hard to know what to look for if you’re not a garage door expert, so here’s a nice rule of thumb: If you can’t determine what’s wrong with your garage door in no uncertain terms, try to stay away until help arrives. You might worry about your belongings, but the vast majority of garage door repair issues aren’t catastrophic; that being said, one wrong move on your part can still lead to serious injury, especially if garage door cables are involved.
How Can I Keep Things Moving?
If human error isn’t the issue and it’s dangerous to operate your garage door, how can you get your life moving again? If your vehicle’s stuck in the garage, you’re essentially housebound until your garage door gets the care it needs.
Rest assured, though, that you won’t be as such for long! ASAP Garage Door Service offers same-day service in our surrounding areas. Indeed, if your garage door is ailing and you can’t afford to wait, we’re just the garage door repair pros for the job. Our prompt attention and responsive contact capabilities mean we’re the first stop if your life has been stalled by a finicky door.