What to do when your garage door stops working

Would you know what to do if your garage door stops working today? Garage door is the heaviest moving object in the home. It has many moving parts and occasionally, some of the parts break down.

First thing you must do is not panic, advises Damian Douglas, 30-year garage door veteran and owner of Damian Douglas Garage Door Service, the Las Vegas, NV based garage door specialists.

“We always advise our clients when they call us on the phone because their garage doors stop working not to panic. We then ask them a few basic questions to make sure it is not something they are doing wrong or failing to do,” he said.

Check garage door remote battery

Douglas said the first thing to check is the battery on the garage door remote. “You will be surprised how many people forget to do this. They fail to change the battery for a long time or their home lost power earlier and they forgot to reprogram the remote.”

“If the battery is not the culprit, we ask more questions to see if the belt or chain is moving when they attempt to open or close the garage door.”

Call your Las Vegas garage door experts

Douglas said if they determine the issue cannot be resolved quickly, “we will set up an appointment to help fix the problem.” “We begin by finding out how the garage door has performed in the past and find out if there have been any changes in operation. Then we will do a point to point inspection of the garage door and garage door opener which includes the garage door sections, track, hinges, springs, cables and rollers,” he said.

“We also check the garage door opener for proper operation; make sure the belt, chain or screw drive is working properly. We check for stripped gears in the motor head and make sure the sensors are aligned and performing correctly.”

He said there are many things that can go wrong with the garage door system. “The home owner can be operating the garage door not knowing there could be something seriously wrong. For instance above the top of your sectional garage door is a torsion spring and in some cases you may have one or for a perfect balanced door, two springs.”

”We have been out to a customer’s home where they could not figure out why the garage door would not go up and we quickly pointed out that the torsion spring had broken. The customer may not know what to look for but we are trained to spot these things,” he added.

Douglas advised homeowners not to attempt to fix broken garage doors. “They are heavy, the torsion springs are wound tight and under pressure. One mistake and they can get hurt. It is not a good idea to fix your garage door unless you are a trained garage door professional. If you are in Las Vegas, Summerlin, Henderson or other nearby cities in Nevada, call Damian Douglas Garage Door Services, your Las Vegas garage door specialists and we will fix the problems immediately,” he added.