Here are a few answers to some of your garage door opener problems. This was a question asked by a home owner who was having difficulties with their garage door opener remote that only work at times.
Garage door opener problems with your remote can be cause by a few things:
- Sun light reflects on your garage door safety sensors
- LED light bulbs can interfere with remote frequencies
- Low or empty remote batteries
Garage Door Opener Remote Work Inconsistently
“I had an experience that may relate to yours. Our garage door opener remote worked for several years. Then one day it didn’t. Naturally it was at night, so I had to go into the garage and push the manual button. OK.
The next day, we came home in the middle of the day, and the remote worked. This went back and forth for a while, including putting in fresh batteries, trying different distances etc.
Garage Door Opener Sensors Affected by Sun light
OK – the story. That summer I had added two LED 12 volt carriage lights to our adjacent garage, as an extension to our 12 volt landscape lighting controlled by a photocell. No problem all summer until the sunset became earlier and the landscape lights turned on. I checked it in detail. Landscape lights off and garage door opener remote worked. Lights on, remote did not work.
LED Light Bulb In Garaged Door Opener Can Affect Remote Frequency
The answer was that many LED lights with their digital trigger controllers inside emit radio frequency signals. These propagate down the wire supplying them, and that wire works like a transmitting aerial. For some lights, that frequency is near the signal band of common remotes. I have heard stories that some people have simply changed lightbulbs someplace in their house, and similar remote signals are interfered with.
Garage Door Opener Problem Solving
My first answer was to put little “ferrite cores” on a loop of the power supply wiring nearest my carport carriage lights. They look like little “Lifesavers”. It worked, but not perfectly. Normally the remote would act from far down the driveway, but now I had to get within 20 feet or so.
Replace your opener LED Lighbulbs
What also helps is to replace the LED lightbulb with an old style bulb. Do make sure the batteries inside your remote have been replaced on your liftmaster.
Relocate you garage door opener safety eyes
Look for the time the garage door opener remote is having problems and look where the sun is positioned. This problem can be solved by relocating the safety sensor to a more hidden spot. By this we mean in a more shaded area away from the sunlight.
Call a garage door opener repair company
Sometimes your garage door opener repair problem can be out of your hands. When you have tried all the things mentioned above and you still experience the problems call a garage door opener repair expert to take care of the problem once and for all.
Best for garage door opener repair company in Chicago
There are many garage repairing companies in Chicago. Victor Garage Door Opener Repair Chicago is a Reputable option. There are other as well as Robert’s. AR-BE, Northshore and more. The United States is a country where 70% of the homes have garage doors of some type. Coming a long way in recent years, garage doors are no longer heavy and unwieldy. Today, they are built to look great and work flawlessly, while requiring minimal maintenance.
Your agreed door is a Valuable Element in your home
Given the fact that a garage is a Chicago home’s most prominently visible element, depending upon its size and orientation, garage door manufacturers are coming up with designs and styles that can boost your home’s curb appeal. Other than the highly popular steel garage doors, lightweight fiberglass and aluminium doors that require low maintenance are becoming obvious choices these days.
Final solution: I bought a different brand of LED bulbs. This was not easy, because there are no suppliers of 12 volt DC candelabra base LED lights in North America. Furthermore, candelabra base in North America is different from what fits and is made for the rest of the world. After a couple of months, the new bulbs arrived and I no longer needed the base adapters. Garage door remote works from over 100 feet all the time!
Garage Door Opens but Will not Close
This sounds like an issue that could be related to the garage door sensors.
If your garage door opener lights blink 8 times, it means that you have a Chamberlain, Craftsman or LiftMaster opener, and will confirm that it is a sensor issue.
The first thing to check would be the lights on the front of the sensors down at the bottom left and right of the door, and confirm that they are both lit. Don’t be alarmed if they are different colors, that is normal.
Align Garage door Opener Safety Sensors
If one or both sensor lights are out, you can try adjusting them to point toward each other, and see if that fixes the issue. If you aren’t able to get the sensors aligned properly, you may have a wiring issue, which can be trickier, and you may need to hire a professional to track it down.
Call The Garage Door Opener Repair Experts in Chicago
It is not safe to operate your garage door opener with the sensors disabled or mounted anywhere other than the bottom corners of the door. That being said, the best way to determine if the sensors are the issue, or the wiring itself, is to remove the sensors from their mounting brackets, and wire them directly into the motor head, to confirm that the sensors function normally.
If the sensors are not the problem, you could be having an issue with the force on the opener, or the door may be out of alignment/off track. If either of these are the case, you may want to consider hiring a professional to inspect the opener and door.
I cannot stress enough: never disconnect the opener while the door is up, unless you can absolutely confirm that the springs are intact and the door is operating normally. It could come crashing down, or pitch to one side, crushing or maiming anyone in it’s path.
Garage Door Opens Partially then Closes
The most likly reason is that you have a broken garage door spring. I’m sure there could be than one cause of this problem. Some other issues could be that the door is getting snagged slightly, and once the chain pulls with too much tension, it has an automatic failsafe and it stops pulling and lets the door down.
This is comparable to the feature that stops the door from crushing you on its way down. This issue comes up in the winter. The track and components freeze and shrink a little and things start to bind.
Give the door just a tiny bit of help pushing up as it was rising, it would make it past the spot where it always got stuck. After lubricating all the components, your may not have the problem anymore.
Give your Garage Door some TLC
Start by getting a can of spray lubricant and spraying the rollers, chain, track, hinges on the door panels etc. There is a good chance this will help the door move more freely and eliminate the problem. If this doesn’t solve it, you may need to re-balance the door, but at that point, I’d consult a garage door specialist.