Garage door not opening or closing? Step-by-step troubleshooting from a Fort Collins technician — what to check before calling, and when it's a real repair.
Before you call anyone, run through these 8 quick checks. About 1 in 3 'broken' garage doors in Fort Collins are something a homeowner can fix in 5 minutes.
If your garage door won't open or close, don't panic — and don't immediately call the most expensive number on Google. About a third of the 'broken garage door' calls we get in Fort Collins and Loveland turn out to be something a homeowner could have fixed in five minutes. Here's the exact checklist we'd run through ourselves.
1. Check the wall switch and the remote. If the wall switch works but the remote doesn't, you need a new remote battery — not a service call. If neither works, the opener's logic board may be the issue.
2. Look at the safety sensors (the little eyes near the floor on both sides of the door). If one of the LEDs is off, blinking, or red instead of green, the sensors are misaligned or blocked. Wipe them with a clean cloth, gently nudge them so the LEDs go solid, and try again. This is the #1 cause of 'my door won't close' in Northern Colorado — a spider web, a leaf, or a kid's bike bumped one out of alignment.