If your garage door won’t open, check four things before you call anyone. Make sure the opener has power, turn off the lock on the wall button, put a fresh battery in the remote, and pull the red release cord to see if the door moves by hand. Up and Down Garage Doors in Richmond answers 24/7 if none of that works.
Check Power and the Lock Button First
Check the plug. Vibration works cords loose from ceiling outlets. If the outlet is a GFCI, press its reset button. Wet winters here trip them more than people expect.
Check the breaker. Garage circuits often share a breaker with outside lights. A tripped breaker can sit halfway, so push it fully off and then back on.
Check the lock button. Many LiftMaster and Chamberlain wall panels have a LOCK feature. LiftMaster’s manual says it stops the remotes from running the opener while the wall control still works. If the wall button opens the door and the remotes do nothing, lock mode is the first suspect. Your panel’s manual shows how to turn it off.
If the opener light won’t come on at all and the outlet is dead with the breaker on, that is an electrical problem. Call an electrician for that part.
Remote dead but wall button works. Swap the battery. Chamberlain’s manual for its older openers calls for a 3V2032 coin cell, positive side up. If a new battery does nothing, the remote may need to be programmed again. Our garage door remote not working guide walks through it.
Photo Eyes Only Block the Door From Closing
The two small boxes near the floor on each side of the opening are the safety sensors. Chamberlain’s manual is clear on this. The sensors must be connected and lined up before the opener will move the door down. If the beam is blocked while the door is open, the door will not close and the opener lights blink 10 times.
So bad sensors keep a door from closing. They do not keep it from opening. If your door is stuck shut, keep reading. If it is stuck open, go to our safety sensor troubleshooting page.
A quick look still helps. The sending eye has an amber light that stays on. The receiving eye has a green light. If the green one is off or flickering, loosen the wing nut and aim it at the other eye until the green glows steady. Wipe the lenses with a dry cloth.
Pull the Manual Release and Test the Door
The red cord hanging from the opener rail disconnects the door from the opener so it moves by hand. The manufacturer warns to use it only with the door closed if you can. Weak or broken springs can make an open door drop fast. Keep people and cars out of the doorway, and never use the cord itself to pull the door.
Lift the door to waist height and let go. A balanced door stays put. If it drops or shoots up, the springs are out of balance or broken. Leave the opener off. Running it against a door that heavy wrecks the drive gear.
Feel for binding. Slide the door up and down slowly. It should run smooth. If it catches, a roller may be out of the track or a cable may be off its drum.
To hook the opener back up, pull the cord toward the opener at an angle until the arm sits level. Chamberlain says the trolley grabs the door again the next time the opener runs. If the door was heavy or binding, leave it disconnected and call us.
Garage Door Won’t Open All the Way
A door that stops partway up is usually one of two things. The first is the opener’s up limit. Chamberlain’s manual says that if the door opens at least five feet but not completely, you turn the UP limit screw to add travel, and one turn is about two inches. If it opens less than five feet, the open force needs adjusting. Run the safety reverse test after any change, the way the manual shows.
The second cause is the door itself. A weak spring makes the door heavy near the top, and the opener quits. Test the balance by hand as above before you touch any settings. If the door is heavy, adjusting the opener only hides a spring problem. Our broken spring repair page shows what we replace.
Garage Door Won’t Open After a Power Outage
No power means the opener can’t move the door. Pull the red release cord with the door closed, then lift the door by hand. If it feels far heavier than normal, stop and leave it down. Step by step instructions are in our guide on how to manually open a garage door during a power outage.
When power comes back, check the GFCI and breaker first, since outages and storms trip them. Then reconnect the trolley and run the opener once. Openers with a backup battery keep working through short outages, and we cover those on the opener battery backup page.
What the Opener Sound Tells You
Motor hums, door stays put. Chamberlain lists a brief hum in its troubleshooting and has you release the door and check the limits. A long hum with no movement is often a failed capacitor or stripped gear. That one needs a tech with parts on the truck.
Motor runs, chain moves, door stays put. The trolley is disconnected. Check the release cord.
Opener clicks and nothing happens. The board is calling for the motor and something is failing. This needs a meter and parts, so book garage door opener repair.
Broken Torsion Springs Are a Hard Stop
If the door is very heavy by hand and you see a gap in the coil above the door, a torsion spring has broken. This is the most common reason a door that worked yesterday won’t open today.
Never touch torsion springs or cables yourself. A wound spring holds enough force to break bones. Leave the winding bars and set screws alone. This is the one job we always tell people to leave to us.
Cables and Drums Fail Quietly
A cable that has jumped its drum feels the same as a broken spring. The door is heavy and won’t stay up. Look at the bottom bracket on each side. The cable should be tight and sitting in the drum groove.
If a cable has snapped, the door hangs crooked with one side lower. Leave it there. Forcing it bends tracks and pops rollers.
| What you find | Safe to fix yourself | Who to call |
|---|---|---|
| Dead outlet, breaker holds | No | Electrician |
| Wall control in lock mode | Yes | Nobody |
| Dead remote, wall button works | Yes, new battery | Us if programming fails |
| Door balanced, opener hums | No | Us |
| Door heavy, gap in spring | Never | Us |
| Cable loose or snapped | Never | Us |
| Door binds as it moves | No | Us |
When to Call Us
Call once you have checked power and the lock and the door still won’t move. Call right away if you found a broken spring or a loose cable. If your car is stuck inside, that is an emergency garage door repair call and we treat it that way.
We answer 24/7 at (778) 873-7282. The on-site assessment is free. Depending on the area a surcharge may apply.
What Happens on a Service Call
We start with the same checks you just did. Power and sensors come first, then a hand balance test. Then we look over the springs and cables along with the rollers and tracks. You get a firm written price before any work starts.
We don’t quote over the phone. A spring on an old door with a bent bracket and a stripped opener is a very different job from the same spring on a newer door. Spring size, the shaft and drums, and any damage from the opener fighting a broken spring all change the price. Our garage door repair page covers the rest of what we fix.
Prevention That Actually Works
Test balance every month. Chamberlain’s maintenance schedule says to run the door by hand monthly and call a technician if it is unbalanced or binding. Catching a spring early beats a door stuck shut.
Check it opens and closes fully. The same schedule says weather can change door travel. A small limit tweak fixes that.
Oil rollers and hinges once a year. The manual says not to grease the tracks.
Replace springs in pairs. If one breaks, the other has the same cycles on it.
What We See Around Richmond
Steveston has plenty of older homes with original hardware, and some of those doors need parts you can’t buy off the shelf. Double doors in Broadmoor and Hamilton are heavy, and that wears springs faster. Newer homes in Terra Nova often came with builder grade openers. Most no-open calls we run started as a maintenance item that nobody caught.
If you ran the checks above and the door still won’t move, call (778) 873-7282. We will tell you what it is and what it costs before we start.
Frozen Bottom Seals in Wet Winters
Damp cold can freeze the bottom seal to the slab overnight. The opener strains against it and then shuts off. Stop pressing the remote. Pour cool water along the seal to free it, then dry the threshold so it doesn’t freeze again.