A garage door that won’t work is a problem with a deadline attached. Your car is either stuck inside or stuck outside, and you need to know in the next few minutes whether this is something you can sort out yourself or something that needs a technician.
Here are the nine faults we’re called out for most often, arranged by what you’re actually seeing. Several of these you can resolve in under five minutes. The rest we’ll tell you plainly to leave alone, and why.
1. Nothing happens at all — no sound, no movement
If the opener is completely dead, start with power before assuming the worst.
Check that the unit is plugged in — vibration works plugs loose over the years. Then check the GFCI outlet it’s plugged into, which may have tripped; press the reset button on the outlet itself. Then check the breaker.
If there’s power and still nothing, look for the lock or vacation mode. Most wall consoles have a lockout button that disables the remotes, and it’s easy to press by accident. If the wall button works but the remotes don’t, that’s almost certainly what happened.
Safe to check yourself. If power is confirmed and the unit is still dead, the logic board or transformer has likely failed and it needs a technician.
2. The motor runs but the door doesn't move
You press the button, you hear the motor turn, nothing happens.
The usual cause is that the trolley has been disconnected from the rail — the emergency release cord has been pulled at some point and never reconnected. Pull the cord again and run the opener; on most units the trolley re-engages automatically on the next cycle.
If the trolley is connected and the motor still spins freely, the drive gear inside the opener has stripped. That’s a common failure on chain-drive units around the ten-year mark and repair is possible on most units depending on age and manufacture. Depending on age and manufacture, we might recommend unit replacement over repair.
Safe to check the trolley. Don’t open the motor housing.
3. The door closes partway then goes back up
This is the most common call on the list.
Look at the two small sensors mounted a few inches off the floor on either side of the opening. One should show a steady light. If either is blinking, off, or flickering, the beam between them is broken and the opener is refusing to close because it thinks something is in the way.
Check these in order: something physically in the beam (a bin, a bike, a coiled hose); dust on the lenses, which is a constant here — wipe both with a soft cloth; and alignment, since a knock from a car door or ladder can easily shift a bracket. Loosen the wing nut, line the sensor up with its partner, retighten.
If all three check out, it might be time to call us out.
Safe to check yourself. Very often a two-minute fix.
4. The door touches the floor then immediately reopens
This is a different fault from the one above, though it looks similar.
The door is reaching the floor, deciding it has hit an obstruction, and reversing. Either the close limit is set too low — so the opener is still pushing after the door has landed — or the door genuinely is meeting resistance from a track problem or a worn roller.
There’s a third possibility worth ruling out first: something on the floor. A raised threshold strip, a buildup of debris along the seal line, or a floor that’s settled unevenly can all catch the door.
Clear the floor yourself. Leave the limit settings alone. Adjusting them incorrectly disables the safety reverse, which is the mechanism that stops the door from closing on a person.
5. A loud bang, then the door won't open
If you heard a sound like a gunshot from the garage — often overnight, often in a cold snap — and the door now won’t lift, a torsion spring has broken.
You’ll be able to confirm it visually. Look at the spring on the shaft above the door: a broken one has an obvious gap in the coils.
Don’t try to open the door manually. Without the spring taking the weight, you’re lifting the full mass of the door — between 150 and 400 pounds depending on size and whether it’s insulated. People are injured doing this every year.
Don’t run the opener either. It isn’t built to lift that weight alone and you’ll destroy the gear or the motor on top of the spring you’ve already lost.
Call a technician. Spring replacement is not a DIY job under any circumstances. If you want to catch the next one earlier, there are warning signs before a spring fails.
6. The door is crooked or has come off the track
One side is lower than the other, the door is jammed at an angle, or a roller has come out of its channel.
Common causes are a snapped lift cable, a roller that’s seized and pulled free, or an impact.
Stop using the door entirely. Don’t try to force it back into the track, and don’t operate the opener. A door that’s off-track is under uneven load and can drop or twist further without warning.
Call a technician. Off-track repair is one of the more common jobs we do and it’s straightforward for someone with the right tools — but it can go very wrong when someone tries to improvise.
7. Remotes don't work but the wall button does
Work through these in order.
Replace the remote battery. That’s the problem more often than anything else. Remote batteries usually weaken gradually rather than dying outright, so the range may decrease before the remote stops working entirely.
Reprogram the remote to the opener. The procedure is in the manual and usually involves a learn button on the motor unit.
Look at the antenna wire hanging from the opener. If it’s been tucked up, coiled, or broken off, range drops dramatically.
If a single remote has stopped and the others still work, it’s the remote. If all of them stopped at once, it’s the receiver in the opener.
Safe to try all of the above.
8. The door is noisy, slow, or shakes as it moves
The door still works, but it doesn’t sound or look the way it used to.
Grinding or scraping through the whole cycle usually means worn rollers or a dry, dirty track. A rhythmic click can be a flat spot on a roller bearing. A shudder often points to a balance problem, which means the springs.
Here’s a simple test that can help identify a balance problem: pull the emergency release, lift the door by hand to about waist height and let go, but do not let the door slam down. A properly balanced door stays put. If it drops or rises, the spring tension is wrong and the opener has been compensating — which is why it’s now working harder and sounding like it.
Safe to test. Cleaning and lubricating the rollers and hinges is also fine and often helps — our maintenance guide covers how. Spring adjustment isn’t.
9. The door opens fine but won't close, and the opener light is flashing
A flashing opener light is a diagnostic code, not a bulb problem. Most manufacturers use the number of flashes to indicate the fault, and the legend is in the manual or printed inside the housing.
By a wide margin the most common code is the photo-eye fault covered in point three above. Second most common is a limit-setting problem mentioned in point four above.
Count the flashes before you call. It tells the technician a great deal before they arrive.
Safe to check yourself.
What to check before you call
If it comes to booking a visit, having these four answers ready shortens the job:
- What exactly happens when you press the button — no sound, motor with no movement, partial travel, or reversal
- Whether the opener light is flashing, and how many times
- Whether the sensor lights are steady or blinking
- Roughly how old the door and opener are
When to stop and call
The line is straightforward. Anything involving springs, lift cables, a door off its track, or force and limit settings needs a technician. Those components store energy or govern the safety mechanisms, and the failure modes are serious rather than inconvenient.
Everything else on this page — power, sensors, remotes, cleaning, the balance test — is fair game.
If you’ve worked through it and you’re still stuck, call us at 602-495-1555 or book a visit online. We provide on-site estimates, so you’ll know what the repair costs before any work starts.
Same-day service 7 days a week across the Phoenix metro — Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Tempe, Glendale, Peoria, Surprise and Goodyear.