garage door opener

The Importance of a Quality Garage Door Opener

Garage doors are one of the heaviest objects that accompany a garage. A garage door opener manages the door’s weight and ensures it closes and opens smoothly. The opener automatically detects any hurdles in the door’s path and will not operate if it detects any.

A door opener offers convenience and makes operating the garage door much easier, thus saving you time and energy. However, if your opener is faulty, the opening and closing of a garage door will take much more time and effort on your part. Therefore, a quality door opener will help ensure you can open or close your garage door seamlessly.

Why It’s Important to Test and Maintain Your Garage Door Opener

You should consider your door opener for your garage as an investment since it makes opening and closing your garage door easier. Failure to conduct regular testing and maintenance results in reducing the door opener’s lifespan. Neglecting your opener could cause faults like non-functional safety sensors and misalignment of tracks to go unnoticed.

Getting your door opener repaired is often much cheaper than replacing the entire opener. Failing to do routine checks may cause minor dysfunctions to escalate to major problems that may require unexpected garage door repairs after the damage becomes worse. Such unforeseen repairs are usually extremely costly.

A Good Quality Garage Door and Opener Increase Your Property Value

If you want to put your house on the market, then you should make sure everything in the house is well maintained and perfectly functional. Buyers looking for properties do not want the inconvenience of having to repair broken opener parts or incurring the cost of a fresh garage door installation. Having a quality door opener for your garage increases the value of your home because the garage is one of the most important aspects of a home.

How to Maintain Your Home’s Garage Door Opener

For your door opener to operate smoothly for the next one or two decades, you must routinely check it to detect and repair faults before they become bigger. There are several steps you can perform to ensure your Fresno garage door opener works as it should.

Conducting Regular Inspections

The most important part of maintaining your door opener for your garage is conducting thorough inspections at regular intervals. You can have monthly inspections to ensure it is in mint condition, and detect any faults at early stages. You can have the opener’s force setting tested by holding the door’s bottom or placing a piece of wood when it is closing. A properly functioning opener should be able to make the door stop immediately and reverse as it detects that hindrance and tries to avoid it. If the door does not reverse easily, it means your opener is operating under excessive force, and you should get a precision garage door repair done.

Common Garage Door Opener Faults

There are many things that can cause door opener faults. You could have an opener that is functioning but it refuses to open the door. This fault may be caused by the wear and tear of a chain-drive socket or gear, a disengaged door, or a broken chain. Another fault could be a strain on the opener which happens when the limit is wrongly set or when you activate safety reversing. Another fault could be due to a remote that only functions from a short distance because of either a poor signal or weak batteries. Another fault could be a door opener that reverses while closing could indicate that there is an obstruction in the way. A door opener reversing happens when the opening sensitivity or limit is not set properly. An opener fault that raises but the door refuses to close could indicate that your safety beam is either unplugged, faulty or misaligned. And finally, an opener operating by itself may be caused by a faulty circuit board, a damaged transmitter, a stray signal, or a wall switch that is experiencing an electric short.

Lubricate All Moving Parts Periodically

Greasing all the moving parts of your garage door and opener extends their lifespan and enables them to operate smoothly. The good thing is that you do not need to lubricate your opener parts every other day to keep them running. You only need to grease them once or twice a year, and it only takes 10 minutes of your time. Also, use the appropriate lubricants for different parts for more efficiency. You should use white lithium grease to lubricate the chains and screws on the opener and for the overhead garage springs repair, get a spray lubricant from a garage door specialist.

Check Your Garage Door Opener’s Auto-Reverse Safety Features

The auto-reverse features in your door opener can be tested using two mechanisms: photocell and mechanical. To test for the mechanical mechanism, place any object, preferably a piece of wood or a sizeable brick, along the path on which the door closes. If the auto-reverse features are set correctly, it should immediately stop and reverse the garage door, pushing it back to the top as soon as the door hits the obstruction.

Using the photocell mechanism, the garage door’s photoelectric system is tested with beams on each side of the door. If you pass your leg in the door’s path as it is closing, it should automatically reverse. Your garage door opener will experience normal wear and tear as it gets older, and the safety features may degrade with time. If you have had the same door opener for more than twenty years, you might consider replacing it with a new one from a Fresno garage door expert for optimal functioning.

Inspect Your Door’s Rollers, Hinges, Springs, and Cables

These parts of your garage door need proper lubrication at least twice per year to ensure they are functioning properly. Follow the instructions in your owner’s manual on how to do the lubrication. As advised in the manual, you can use lightweight household oil, spray silicone or lubricant, or white lithium grease.

A garage door moves up and down thousands of times in a year, and the constant vibrations and movement can make the hardware become loose over time. Inspect all bolts and roller brackets for looseness and tighten them accordingly to avoid malfunction.

If your door opener is experiencing issues, you can easily fix most of the minor ones on your own, like replacing rollers. However, get a professional technician to repair your complex repairs and replacements. Hardware that operates under high tension like springs, should be fixed by an expert since they can cause injury when mishandled. Choose a garage door repair Fresno-based technician to fix your garage door and opener issues.

Test Your Door’s Balance

For your garage door opener to function properly, your door has to be properly balanced. Failure to have perfect balance puts strain on the door opener since it will have to work harder to be able to move the door. To test if it is properly balanced, close the door and pull the release handle on the opener to disconnect it. Try to manually open the door by lifting it halfway. It should lift smoothly, and when you release it, it should not roll back down. If it does not, it could be an indication of imbalanced springs. Garage door spring repairs should only be done by experts from a Fresno garage door precision service.