GARAGE DOOR OPENS OR CLOSES ON ITS OWN

Yes, it actually happens! Your garage door can open or close on its own. You may have experienced this unusual event already. If not, don’t be surprised if or when it happens; just remember this post by our Garage Door Repair Commerce City technicians and you’ll know what to do about it.

Imagine coming home from work and seeing your garage wide open for all to see. It’s a scary feeling; after all, who has been in your garage or your house while you were away? Is anything missing or is anyone still inside? You KNOW you closed the garage door when you left. You even saw it close! What in the world is going on? Here in Commerce City, CO this can be a little inconvenient during the cold months.

You may have a short somewhere

One of the main causes of garage door openings and closings on their own is an electrical short. If you have one, it’s either in one of your transmitters or in the wall button or its wires. These shorts can cause your garage door to fully close (you watched it come down and close!) but then suddenly go back up as you drive off. To see if the problem is with your transmitter, or remote; try removing the batteries and operating your garage door from the wall unit. If that clears up the problem, it was your transmitter; if it doesn’t, there are other areas where the short may be, including the wall button, the circuit board, the wall button wiring, and the wired keypad. If you are doing these repairs yourself, try a process of elimination and test each component for functionality and use the trial and error method to eliminate each part until you find where the problem is. You are always welcome to call our Commerce City, CO garage door repair pros and we’ll quickly and conveniently get to the problem and fix it for you. Other local repair technicians can too so if you want to save the hassle and time invested; just call for a professional to come and help.

Your remote has gone crazy

Not really! Remotes don’t actually go insane; they just act like they do. Here’s what we mean. If your garage door opener remote is defective or is running on low battery power, it may be sending out random signals. If the unit is defective you may need to replace it or at least have it serviced. Low or leaky batteries are another matter. Test them by taking them to a local retail store like Lowe’s, Home Depot, Best Buy or Wal-Mart. They will test your remote battery for free. No, you don’t have to buy one of their batteries even though they’d like you to. If you have a home battery tester, you can do this yourself. Remote batteries are not expensive and you should always keep some extra ones on hand anyway. If you open your remote and discover that your battery has leaked; remove the batteries and clean up the leakage with a Q-tip dipped in vinegar or lemon juice. Try removing as much as possible and especially around the terminals. Dry completely before adding new batteries to the remote.

Someone has the same frequency

Sometimes your neighbor down the street winds up with your same remote frequency. When this happens, your garage door will open or close on its own. There are a number of reasons why this can happen. The neighbor may have adjusted their remote code for better security and unknowingly matched yours. This is more common in older remotes but it still can happen often enough to baffle lots of people.

One of our Commerce City, CO customers reported that he decided to work from home one day and was in the middle of a phone call when he heard his garage door opening. He was upstairs and happened to look out the window directly above the garage. To his surprise, no one had driven up to his garage door and there were no cars visible coming or going. What just happened? It turns out that his neighbor 3 houses down had just come home for lunch and her husband had just last night changed the frequency on her opener remote for security reasons. Incidents like these happen with greater frequency on openers manufactured before 1993. After this date, remote manufacturers starting using rotating codes that result in millions of programming number combinations.

Power surge

A nearby lightning strike or storm can cause a power surge in your electrical system. Sometimes this can cause damage to your opener’s electrical circuits.

Lock that door!

Locking the door that leads from your garage directly into your home is a smart thing to do. This is true even if you are not experiencing garage door openings and closings on their own. Imagine leaving your front door unlocked and wide open all day while you are at work or on vacation. You would never do that! It’s almost the same thing when you leave your inner garage door unlocked. Anyone that manages to get inside your garage can now simply walk through that door into your living area. All they have to do is close the garage door on the wall switch and help themselves to your belongings in almost total privacy.

Get in the habit of locking your doors especially the one inside your garage leading into the house itself. If you are experiencing unexpected garage door opening problems and are leaving for a trip or on vacation, invest in a simple garage door slide lock. This basic lock attaches to the tracks on your garage door and when locked, it prevents the garage door from opening as it is now locked into place. Just be sure to remove it when you return. You can damage your garage door or burn out your opener motor by attempting to open your garage door with the lock in place.

 

 

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