Garage Door Opener Repair

The hydrangeas are blooming! We have three bushes in the front bed and two have blue flowers. The third one, right next to the others, has lavender blooms.  It’s neat how the ph balance of the soil varies enough in such close proximity to produce different colored blooms.

So, last weekend my garage door opener stopped working properly.   We have a two door garage and the right door is the one I use daily to park my car (see the hydrangea bushes there to the right?).

I was able to open the door without any problems with both the button on the wall and the remote in my car.   The problem occurred when I pressed either button to close the door.  Using the clicker/remote to shut the door did absolutely nothing so I couldn’t shut the garage door from the car once I backed out.  Using the wall button worked but only if I held the button down until the door closed all the way.   A performed some troubleshooting and found that behavior is a safety feature when there’s a problem with the sensors.    The original system had two of these sensors, one placed on each side of the door.  They are basically there to stop the door from shutting if anything interrupts their line of communication.

Apparently, the one with the red light just died.  It stopped working altogether which meant that the door didn’t receive the proper signal to shut when the wall button was pressed.  You can override that by holding the wall button down. Fortunately, the solution was pretty easy.   We bought a new pair of sensors, specifically the Overhead Door Safe-t-beam System.  This set works with any Overhead Door or Genie model made after 1996.

They look a little different from the original pair and they mount differently but they were easy to install and work perfectly! I am back in business – the business of parking my car in the garage, that is.

Have you been able to troubleshoot and fix anything around the house lately?

By the way,  are you familiar with HomeTalk?  I mentioned it back when I posted about our yard work since we found the landscaper using HomeTalk.  It’s a great site for all things home & garden.  You can research how to fix things, what to plant, and find creative decorating ideas.   After posting about my tree stump table,  I put together a HomeTalk board showcasing 15 Tree Stump Transformations.   Click through for the full projects.

Happy Weekend!
-J