Electric garage doors are an excellent space-saving measure for your garage, and they also save your back and shoulders from the heavy lifting involved in a manual door. But when they stop working, it can be difficult sometimes to work out the cause. Often, newbies end up with doors open that won’t close or vice versa. 

If you’ve found yourself stuck in that situation, we’ve provided a list of potential reasons your garage door isn’t closing. 

Obstructions

This applies to both manual and electric garage doors, although it’s easier to see an obstruction for a manual garage door because it’ll become quite clear as you’re trying to close it what’s in the way. 

For an electric garage door, if the sensors detect anything in the garage’s way they will not close. This could be a small object that’s fallen down without you noticing. 

So, the first thing you should do if you’re having issues closing your garage door is checked there are no obstructions and clear anything out of the way, including leaves or twigs. You’d be surprised how sensitive the sensors are. 

Disconnected from Power Supply

It seems silly, but this is a more common problem than you’d think. Fairly often, when people are moving things around their garage and using different appliances, they can accidentally unplug their garage door from the socket and forget to put it back in. It could also have accidentally come loose or someone has switched the socket off. 

If you’re having issues with your electric garage door closing, the first thing to do is double-check it’s still connected to the mains electricity, and the power is switched on. If it is, you should also try the outlet with a different device to ensure it’s still working. 

Broken Sensors

The sensors sit at the bottom of your electric garage door, and they’re there to detect if there’s anything in the door’s way so it can open and close safely. If you’re trying to close your garage door and there’s nothing blocking it, the sensors could be faulty. 

If one sensor is damaged, or off, they won’t give your electric garage door the signal to tell the door it’s safe to close, which means your door can end up stuck open. Sometimes the sensor lights blink if there’s a problem. You can find more information in your garage door manual. If the sensors are faulty, you may have to call a garage door repairman. 

Check The Remote

Believe it or not, this is another common mishap with an electric garage door. Your remote control may be out of battery. You can check this by changing the batteries and seeing if it works then. It’s an easy fix if this is the issue. 

Sometimes, a power surge or power cut can cause issues with the garage door memory which can stop it from responding to the remote even if it has fresh batteries. If this happens, you will have to reprogram the electric garage door. You can find out how to do this in the user manual, but if in doubt you can call an expert. 

Damaged Tracks or Cables

If any of the vital aspects of the garage door have become damaged, then it will stop working. This includes the tracks, slats, and cables that make up the physical exterior of your electric garage door. 

There are springs that help the door close and open, if they get damaged they can misalign, or stop opening and closing. Tracks can become bent, or warped, which prevent the garage door from functioning as it should too. If you’ve got any damage, call a repairman to come and have a look. 

Tips For Maintaining Your Garage Door

While some issues can happen to cause your manual or electric garage door to fail that are outside of your control, there are things you can do to ensure everything continues to work safely. Simple things like keeping the remote control charged, and regularly checking to make sure nothing is blocking the space beside or above your garage door will help you make sure it can always open. 

We understand that if you’ve just had an electric garage door installed, you’ll want to show it off. However, excessive use can damage the thermal override and cause it to shut down to avoid the motor from overheating. It means the garage is out of action for around 20 minutes, but it’ll work after that.