Monthly Garage Door Maintenance

Keeping your garage door is something that keeps your family and home safe. There are ways you can take steps every month to prevent and catch problems before they cause damage or leave you needing repairs. These tasks can be carried out by home owners, or if you are uncomfortable you can call on garage door repair & maintenance technicians to take care of it for you.

Garage Door Maintenance Checklist

Safety being always the first concern in any project you will want to let everyone know that you are working on the garage door and they should not try to operate it.  Taking a few minutes once a month, helps keep your garage door working trouble free.

Visual Inspection Of System

Take a minute to look around inside your garage. With the door closed stand in the garage and use a flashlight to closely inspect the cables, springs, pulleys, rollers, and mounting hardware. Mounting hinges can get loose and start to pull away. You will also want to pay close attention to the cable and watch for fraying or wear. If you see something that doesn’t look right, or when you are opening the door something sounds wrong you will want to take note. These are the hallmarks that something is wearing out and you should have your garage door checked out by a trained technician. This helps avoid getting a car stuck inside the garage and having to wait for repairs.

Garage Door Balance Testing

Garage doors with automatic openers systems should be disconnected from the opener for this project. Once the garage door is in manual open you should be able to lift the door smoothly. It should stay open and should not take a lot of effort. If it takes a lot of strength or doesn’t stay open the garage might be out of balance. This means that a trained tech should be called out to make the adjustments. Undue strain from out of balance garage doors make the openers work harder and wear out faster.

Reverse Mechanism Safety Testing

Garage doors build after 1993 are required to have edge sensors and photo eyes that prevent garage doors from harming people. If your garage door is older than 1993 and is not equipped with these safety features it is highly recommended to get it replaced and upgraded. It can prevent entrapment or damage to vehicles or other items stored in your garage.

To test the reverse mechanism simply throw a section of 2×4 on the ground where the garage door closes and hit the button to start it to close. When the door hits the wood it should backup and reopen the door. If your garage just closes down and traps the 2×4, give the garage door service company a call.

Photo Eye Safety Testing

Much like the edge sensor the photo eyes watch for objects that are in the path of the garage door and aim to keep us safe. Again, if your door is older than 1993 and you don’t have this safety feature it is recommended to get a new garage door to keep everyone safe and prevent damage to your vehicles.

To test the photo eye have a broomstick or a long object ready and hit the button to start closing your garage door. Wave the object in front of the photo eyes that are located usually about knee high to test the system. Doing this should break the communication between the two sensors and automatically reverse the door to fully open.

If your garage door ignores the object and closes anyway you will want to inspect, clean, and adjust your photo eyes. Cleaning should be done with a soft cloth, and adjustments can be done by hand to make sure the photo eyes are pointing directly at one another.

Garage Door Force Testing

For garage doors that have automatic opener systems the door should only try to close with a certain amount of force. To test to make sure your door is in good condition you can try to test this by trying to stop the door with your hands. This is a more dangerous test and should only be done if you are confident you will not be injured. To do the test you start your garage door to close and then as it closes you try to hold the bottom of the door up with your outstretched arms. If the door continues to close immediately remove your hands and step out of the way.

Professional Garage Door Maintenance

If you aren’t comfortable testing the garage door, have seen damaged or worn parts, or hear unusual noises when your garage door is opening or closing get it checked out by the professionals. The garage door is the largest moving part of your house and can cause damage to property, or worse harm to people using the garage. For service please give us a call at 480-641-2301