Garage Door Repair and the Causes of Stuck or Crooked Doors

Automatic garage door openers are one of the true conveniences of modern domestic life. You can arrive home in a blinding snowstorm yet still get yourself and your car neatly tucked away without a single flake landing on your head. That’s the upside. When your garage door decides not to play nice, however, it can be a different story. Sometimes an overhead door will become crooked or, seemingly out of the blue, get stuck part way up or part way down in the cycle. What then?

When to Call For Garage Door Repair

Yes, garage doors sometimes get stuck which can be a major inconvenience. However, a door getting stuck doesn’t just happen. There’s a reason why the door got stuck and often times that reason can be traced back to a lack of proper maintenance or service on the door. Here are six of the most common reasons a garage door will get stuck.

• Poor Lubrication - If your door’s motor has a chain drive the chain needs to be lubricated on a regular basis, just like the chain on a bicycle. If you skip this simple but crucial maintenance step, you’re likely to experience the door seizing up on you at some point. You can avoid this altogether by scheduling annual garage door maintenance.
• Sensors Out of Line - If you hit the track with your car while backing out you might not do any damage to the track itself but you can knock the sensors mentioned above out of alignment. In this case the door may go up fine but refuse to close. If one of the sensors has simply become obstructed, you usually won’t have to call for garage door repair - you can clear any visible obstructions yourself with minimal effort.
• Sensor Obstructions - This applies to the door failing to close. Garage doors use a beam that goes between sensors on each side of the track to tell them if something is in the way of the door. If the beam is broken the door, sensing there may be a person or pet in the way, will not close. However, sometimes other things can get in the way of the sensor like blowing leaves, paper or a fallen garden tool. Until the obstruction is cleared the door will not close. You can usually re-align garage door sensors yourself.
• A Damaged Track - Sometimes people accidentally strike the track with their car. If you’ve struck the track and then left the house you may not know you’ve damaged the track until you return later and the door won’t open. If you do accidentally strike the track make sure you run the door through a couple of up/down cycles to ensure everything is still operating the way it's supposed to. If your tracks need re-aligning after being struck, you are best advised to leave that to the garage door professionals.
• Broken Spring - Once in a while the door will begin to open and then suddenly crash back to the ground and stay that way. This is usually an indication that either the torsion spring or one of the extension springs has snapped. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the motor that lifts a garage door, it’s the spring. Springs usually snap because they’re old, but that aging process can be accelerated by poor maintenance. If the spring has snapped you’ll need to call for fast garage door repair immediately.
• Door Lock Engaged - Most garage doors have a handle on them which, if turned, engages the manual lock system on the inside of the door. Sometimes this gets turned by accident and can cause quite a bit of confusion. If your door is refusing to open, the manual locking mechanism is one of the first things you should check. It could save you the time and money of calling for garage door repair when it’s really not needed.

While some of the reasons a garage door may fail to open have to do with inadequate maintenance, cold weather can present its own set of challenges to automatic doors especially in this part of the country. If your door is generally working fine and then suddenly starts acting up during one of Colorado’s patented arctic cold snaps the problem may be weather related. For instance:

• Metal being metal it will contract in the cold. The colder it gets, the greater the contraction. In extreme cold springs or other metal components of your garage door opener may seize up, causing the door to get stuck in either the open or closed position. The problem may be alleviated through the application of a silicon-based spray lubricant.
• When it’s really cold for prolonged periods of time grease may harden and cause the chain to lock up or prevent the spring from coiling and uncoiling properly. It is never, under any circumstances, a smart idea to work on the springs yourself. Garage door springs store enormous amounts of energy, which makes them potentially deadly if mishandled. Always call in the professionals if you think there is a problem related to the springs.

There are quite a few reasons why a garage door will get stuck. Some are maintenance-related while others are weather-related. Some of them are simple to fix; like moving whatever is blocking the sensor beam, or disengaging the manual lock. Some, however, will require the attention of professional garage door repair technicians like those from A Better Garage Door.

After more than four decades as local garage door service professionals, we’ve seen every kind of problem that can befall an overhead garage door and know the right way to go about fixing them all. If your garage door is sticking and you’re not sure why, don’t take any chances with your health and safety, call A Better Garage Door at (303) 920-2267. We’ll get someone there ASAP to inspect the door, diagnose the problem and set things right so that you can go back to other things, like relaxing after a hard day’s work.

Garage Door Repair Advice: What Is Causing Your Door to Be Crooked?

The modern garage door requires all the different components to work in precise harmony. As such if something goes wrong it becomes immediately obvious. If you’ve noticed that your garage door is suddenly hanging lower on one side it’s not something that should be ignored. A crooked garage door presents physical hazards to everyone in the house as well as practical hazards to the door itself. If the problem is not addressed in a timely fashion a door that closes with one side raised will waste energy, make your home a target for thieves and lay out the welcome mat for local animals. But what causes a garage door to hang crooked? Below we’ll take a look.

Common Garage Door Repair Problems: The Crooked Garage Door

The vast majority of the time the contemporary garage door does its job without ever calling attention to itself. They’re such reliable mechanisms that most of us take them for granted. But sometimes even the best garage door will start to hang lower on one side than the other. If it’s caught quickly it’s not a big deal. But if the problem is not addressed it could lead to significant issues down the road. The following are some of the most common reasons a garage door will start to hang crooked.

• Broken or worn out spring - While most folks assume the “opener” is what opens and closes the door the fact is a more accurate name for the opener would be “starter” or “regulator”, because that’s what it does. It gets the door started and then regulates the motion to ensure it’s nice and smooth. The actual lifting is done by the springs and if one of your extension springs is broken or just old and worn out one side of the door will hang lower than the other. If you need to have a spring replaced you need to call the garage door repair company. This is not something that’s open for debate. People have died working on garage door springs. If you suspect a problem with one of your springs, call for garage door repair from professionals.
• Debris in the track - Sometimes the roller gets gunked up and starts dragging itself through the track causing the door to hang crooked. And sometimes the problem is with the track itself. If you leave the garage door open a lot wind-born dirt and debris can accumulate in the track over time until one day it begins to interfere with the ability of the door to raise and lower itself. If the blockage is on one side the door will hang crooked. In this case you may be able to clean the track yourself and not need to call for Commerce City garage door repair. Still, if you don’t have the time or inclination give us a call and we’ll send someone over to rectify the problem pronto.
• Broken garage door cable - The cables are part of the lifting mechanism. Garage doors have a cable on each side that’s wound around a drum with one end attached to the door itself. Energy from the spring turns the drum which either winds or unwinds the cable, thereby lifting or lowering the door. If one of these cables is broken power from the spring can’t get to the door and the door hangs crooked. While replacing the cable itself is not necessarily a complex job, tweaking the alignment once the new cable is in place takes practice and patience. Therefore replacing a cable is best left to the pros who fix garage doors for a living.
• Broken or frozen roller - The rollers are those seldom seen components of the garage door that keep it affixed to the tracks and enable it to glide effortlessly up and down. But rollers are not indestructible and sometimes older rollers in particular will get gunked up inside causing the roller to become frozen. A roller that’s not rolling becomes a drag on one side of the door and can cause it to hang at an odd angle. Repairing or replacing the roller is a fairly simple job. But if the problem is left to fester it can result in damage to the track and stress on the opener.

When the garage door is acting up, it’s not something that should be ignored. The garage door weighs hundreds of pounds and making sure it’s always in good working order is vital to the safety of everyone in the house. When you need garage door repair in Loveland, Boulder or Commerce City, call the company with more than four decades of local experience: A Better Garage Door.