When you buy a house, you check the ceilings and walls for leaks and water damage. You check the sinks and toilets for plumbing issues. You might check the neighborhood to see if it’s safe for the kids. What you probably won’t check is the functionality of the Clermont garage doors. That’s because everyone just kind of assumes that garages doors are invincible. Frankly speaking, garage doors just don’t go very high on the list of concerns when it comes to household maintenance.
But there are a number of unfortunate truths in life. And one of them is that everything breaks, garage doors included. Another is that for many things, when they break it feels like you’re the only one who has ever had to deal with them breaking. One of the things that evokes such emotions is the garage door. Because honestly, who really has to deal with a garage door issue anyway? Right? Wrong. If your garage door is giving you trouble, rest assured, you are not alone. Here are a few of the most common causes for concern.
The Freakishly Loud Thud
You may hear it when you open it or close it. It just sounds like it’s hitting the ground entirely too hard. Or bumping into something it shouldn’t be on the ceiling. Either way, it’s a relatively common problem with a relatively easy fix. If your door is nine feet by seven feet, your torsion spring is probably broken. The other possibility is that your extension spring is broken. These are the two kinds of springs. Either one of them breaking can result in the noisy thud. And if you don’t take care of it, yes, you could induce harsher damage to your door and garage over time. In order to fix it, you’ll have to call a professional technician to replace the spring. This is a dangerous job, so don’t try to do it yourself, as it could result in serious injury.
Misaligned Tracks
This can happen just naturally over time and there isn’t any brilliant way to prevent it. Sooner or later, the doors can come off the hinges, in which case they simply stop working. The usual suspects are the horizontal tracks across the ceiling. The most basic and easily fixable culprits are the screws, nuts and bolts. Every time you open or close your door, the tracks are shaking. If at any point anything is loose, that looseness will exacerbate with each time you operate the door. Sooner or later, something is going to fall out, at which point the alignment is sure to fall out of place. Depending on the severity of the situation, you can try and fix it yourself or call a professional. If you notice the loose screws early on, you can simply replace them yourself. But if the door has already fallen off the hinges, and in a worst case scenario fallen on the ground, you should call someone who has the tools and experience to address the problem safely.
Door Starts Closing And Then Stops And Opens Again
This is the result of misaligned sensors. If you have a photoelectric door, that’s almost always the guilty party. This a security measure that’s meant to prevent the door from closing on small children. But sometimes, if the sensors don’t line up, they’ll detect that someone or something is there when there really isn’t anything. This is one of the most common problems and also one of the easiest to fix. All you have to do is line up the beams that sense movement. The beams are invisible however, so it may take a bit of playing around with it.
Are you having some Clermont garage doors issues? We can help with that. Give Hudson Valley Overhead Doors and Operators a call at (845) 876 2772.