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A garage door is important in every home but is often underappreciated.
It adds to the curb appeal of your home and provides your family convenience and safety.
Since we’re using our garage doors several times a day, it suffers from more stress than we realize.
Only then do we recognize the importance of our garage door when it stops functioning correctly.
If you find your garage door opens by itself, it could mean a lot of problems.
It could also affect the overall mechanism of your garage door if the issue is not addressed quickly.
For this reason, we have round-up potential issues why your garage door opens by itself and how to deal with it.
#1: Inspect the Wirings
Once the control wiring is in an exposed spot or suffers from a short circuit, it can lead to the garage door operating on its own.
This situation happens due to an exposed wire-brushed up against the garage door track or another component.
The friction between the wiring and a component occurred; it will cause the motor unit to activate, creating an electrical impulse.
You need to check the wiring between the photo-eye sensors located at the sides of the garage door.
You also don’t need to handle the wires and turn off the power since they are low-voltage ones.
Look for any bare strands of wire or an object that might be piercing the wire.
When one of the situations occurs, a mouse has probably chewed the wires near the sensor eyes, or the wires are damaged.
To deal with the problems, buy new wires.
You can purchase at any hardware or home improvement store near you.
#2: Inspect the Garage Door Opener Button
The garage door opener has configurations you can set, and most likely, there’s a button that activates the garage door.
Check if the button is free of any dirt or debris.
The reason is that the garage door button can quickly get dirty.
Other times, it could be stuck accidentally in a pushed position.
If either one of the situations exists with your garage door, it could be the reason why it opens by itself.
Clean the button and the connections of the housing.
Make sure as well to deactivate the push button to disengage the opening mechanism.
Also, you need to ensure that the wiring from the opener button is not damaged or compromised.
If there is visible damage or a bare spot in the wiring, it could create a short circuit and accidentally operate the door.
With this, seek help from a garage door repair company to deal with the damaged wirings.
#3: Check the Safety Sensors
Most garage door openers invented after 1993 have safety features installed.
This safety feature allows the garage door to open and close and automatically moves on its own if it detects an object blocking it.
The detection of the obstructions is done with the help of the safety sensors, located on both sides of the door’s opening.
In this mechanism, once the garage door touches an object, it automatically reverses.
In short, even the slightest detection of any obstruction, such as leaves, snow, or toy, can prevent the garage door from closing completely.
However, if there is a misalignment on the sensors, the auto-reverse mechanism won’t work correctly.
As a result, you may find the garage door opens by itself.
To deal with this issue, examine the condition of the sensors if they are misaligned.
Check the wirings as well since it could cause the mechanism to operate poorly.
Fortunately, with most modern garage doors, you can see a blinking light found on the opener or by the opener button.
The blinking light indicates that something is blocking the garage door.
However, if you don’t see any obstructions, it’s possible that the garage door sensors have become bad and need replacement.
With this, seek help from Smooth Garage Doors to replace the sensors for you.
Call us now!
#4: Get the Neighbors Involved
If you have a neighbor who owns a garage door with a remote with a similar programming code as yours, most likely, he has been activating your garage door accidentally.
The situation might be a rare case, but it is possible.
Especially if you have an old opener, it might be programmed with positioning clips.
You can reposition the clips and check if the method works.
But before you do it, talk with your neighbors and ask them to open their garage doors.
If your garage door opens as well, then the method of repositioning the clips works.
You can also ask for help from a garage door repair company to check the issue if you want to be sure.
Want a Repair?
If any of these methods work, congratulations on solving the problem.
Otherwise, call Smooth Garage Doors to help you.
We work with residential and commercial garage doors and offer various services such as garage door installation, repair, replacement, and maintenance.
Whatever services you need from us, we can cater them to you.
Call us now if you’re in Vaughan and Richmond Hill!
