What you are seeing
- The opener does nothing at all, or its light comes on and the door still does not move.
- The door starts to close and then reverses for no visible reason, sometimes over and over.
- The wall button works but the remote does not, or a remote has to be held right against the door.
- The remote works at the door but not from the end of the driveway.
- The opener's lights flash a code, or the door reverses while the opener lights blink.
- The door opens or closes by itself, or reacts to a neighbour's remote.
Likely causes
What a good contractor will do
- Tests the wall control, each remote and both sensors one at a time, so the fault can be narrowed to the control, the receiver, the sensors or the wiring between them.
- Cleans, aligns or replaces the safety sensors and repairs or re-runs any damaged low-voltage wiring.
- Resets the travel and force limits, re-programs the remotes and reads the opener's fault codes against its own diagnostics.
- Tests the safety reverse the proper way, by breaking the beam and by checking the door's response, before the job is called done.
Before you call
- The opener make and approximate age, and the door make and age if they are different.
- A photo of the sensor eyes at the bottom of each track, and of the opener head and the wiring running to it.
- What the opener does and what its lights do, including how many times they flash, and whether the wall control behaves differently from the remote.
- Whether the remotes have fresh batteries, and whether the door does this all the time or only sometimes.
Safety first
- Never remove, bypass or defeat the safety sensors to get a door to close. They are the reason a child, a pet or a foot under the door is not crushed, and a door that only closes with the beam bypassed is not safe to use.
- Do not raise the force setting or stretch the travel limits to push a door past a fault. Those limits are what stop the opener from forcing a jammed door, and raising them hides the fault and damages the drive.
- If the door closes on its own, or will not reverse, stop using the opener and unplug it. Move the door by hand only if it moves safely, otherwise leave it alone.
- There is both low-voltage and mains wiring at the opener. Do not open the opener housing, and do not work on the wiring yourself.
Ask the contractor
- Is the fault in the sensors, the wiring, the wall control or the opener itself, and how did you test each one?
- Will you test the safety reverse after the repair, and can you show me what a pass looks like?
- Are the sensors being cleaned, aligned or replaced, and are the brackets and wiring secure?
- Is this opener repairable, and how much life is realistically left in it?
- If the opener is beyond repair, will the existing door work with a new unit, and what will you check first?
- What should I be doing between now and then to keep this from happening again?
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