When you decide to leave for the day, your garage door opens fine. You back your car up and as you give the remote a tap to close it, the door moves a little and then suddenly goes back up. After a little frustrating experimentation, you discover that the door will only completely close when you hold down the button on the wall switch.
While you might look to your remote as the issue, this very specific issue is a problem with the garage door itself, or more specifically, the safety sensors at the bottom.
If you have a modern garage door, you may run into this issue if your safety sensors – the little eyes that need to align at the bottom of your garage door – suffer from issues. These sensors are meant to prevent the door from closing on you by reversing it when something crosses the sensor. However, there need not be something blocking the path of the sensors for them to cause this issue.
When your door won’t close unless you hold down the wall switch, thus using the only way to override the safety sensors, you can try a number of things.
- Check to see if the sensors are blocked, especially by unsuspecting debris right up against them
- Check for dirty sensor eyes
- Check for loose wires either at the motor head or the sensors themselves
- Check alignment
- Assume the sensors have gone bad, which is possible
Most commonly, something might have tapped a sensor and knocked it out of alignment. However, it is worth noting that sometimes having direct sunlight shine on a sensor can have this effect as well. While unlikely, you may want to try closing it later in the day if the sun shines into your garage.
While you can clean off a dirty eye and move debris on your own, unfortunately when it comes to loose wires or misaligned sensors, you need a professional touch. If your garage door is having this issue or other just as infuriating issues, contact us today.
