Garage door fixes you can safely do yourself, and the ones that can hurt you

The line between a homeowner job and a technician job

You can safely check the opener's power and breaker, replace remote batteries, clean and realign the safety sensors, lubricate hinges and rollers, and test the opener's auto-reverse each month. Leave springs, cables, the bottom brackets where the cables attach, the cable drums and any door that has come off its track to a trained technician. The dividing line is tension: anything connected to the springs stores enough energy to cause serious injury when it lets go.

We fix garage doors across the Dallas area, and a fair number of our calls turn out to be a dead remote battery or a photo eye nudged by a broom. I would rather you solve those yourself and save the visit. I would also rather you never touch a spring. This guide shows you exactly which jobs fall on which side of that line.

Five minutes of checks when the opener stops responding

Before you assume the opener has died, run through the simple causes. Our opener page lists these as the safe homeowner checks, and between them they solve a surprising share of no-response calls.

Work through them in order and test the door after each one. If the wall button works but the remote does not, the problem is almost certainly the remote or its battery. If nothing works at all, including the opener light, look at power first.

• Confirm the opener is plugged in and the outlet has power; plug a lamp into it if you are unsure.
• Check the breaker panel and any GFCI outlet in the garage that may have tripped.
• Replace the battery in the remote and in any wireless keypad.
• Clear anything in the path of the safety sensors near the floor, including leaves, cobwebs and stored items.
• Check whether a lock button on the wall control has been pressed, which disables remotes on many models.

Photo eyes: the most common fix you can make yourself

If your door starts to close and then reverses, or refuses to close at all while the opener light blinks, look at the two small sensors on either side of the door near the floor. According to DASMA, since 1993 openers made for the United States have been required to include a second safety reversing feature such as these photoelectric eyes. When the invisible beam between them is blocked or the sensors are knocked out of line, the opener assumes something is under the door and reverses.

Wipe both lenses with a soft dry cloth. Check that each sensor is pointing straight at the other; most have a small indicator light that glows steadily when aligned and flickers or goes dark when they are not. If one has been bumped, gently bend its bracket back until the light is steady. DASMA's guidance is that the eyes should not be mounted higher than six inches above the floor, so a child or pet cannot pass under the beam undetected.

Never tape over, disconnect or bypass the sensors to get the door to close. They are the reason a closing door stops for a child or a dog. If cleaning and aligning do not solve it, the wiring or the sensors themselves may need replacing, and that is a quick job for a technician.

Lubrication that helps instead of hurting

A dry door is a noisy door, and a few minutes with the right product makes a real difference, especially after a hot summer bakes the lubricant out of moving parts. Use a spray lubricant made for garage doors on the hinges between sections, the bearings of steel rollers and the pivot points of the opener's arm. DASMA notes that springs can squeak simply from normal use and suggests a spray-on lubricant before calling a professional; you can mist a spring without touching it.

Do not grease the inside of the tracks. Rollers should roll in a clean track, and grease there collects dust and grit that makes the door run worse. Wipe the tracks clean instead. Nylon rollers with sealed bearings need little or no lubrication. If a part still squeaks or grinds a few days after lubrication, it is worn, and our guide to what loud, jerky or crooked doors usually mean helps you judge how soon to have it looked at.

Weatherstripping is another reasonable homeowner job. The rubber or vinyl seal along the sides and top of the door frame dries and cracks in the heat, and replacing it is a matter of a few nails or screws. The bottom seal is different: on many doors it sits in a retainer right next to the bottom brackets, so if changing it means loosening those brackets, leave it for the technician.

The monthly reverse test every household should do

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission advises testing an opener's reversing feature according to the manufacturer's instructions and then testing it monthly. Your owner's manual describes the method for your model; it usually involves laying a piece of wood flat on the floor in the door's path and closing the door onto it. The door should reverse when it touches the obstruction. Then wave something through the photo-eye beam as the door closes and confirm it reverses again.

If the door fails either test, stop using the opener to close it until it has been checked. The CPSC's advice for a door that fails is to adjust it according to the manual or have it inspected by a professional. Force and travel settings live inside the opener, and the right setting depends on a door that is properly balanced, which brings you back to the springs. Many failed reverse tests are really balance problems.

Jobs that are never a weekend project

These parts are either under constant high tension or support the door's full weight. DASMA advises that spring systems be repaired only by trained professionals and that frayed or worn cables be replaced only by a trained technician, and it recommends trained technicians for installing both doors and openers. I agree with every word.

• Torsion springs on the shaft above the door, and extension springs along the tracks
• Lift cables and the drums they wind onto
• Bottom brackets, where the cables attach to the door, which DASMA says should be adjusted or loosened only by a trained technician
• A door that has come off its track or is hanging crooked
• Bent track sections and the brackets that hold them to the wall
• Installing a new door or an opener, including the reinforcement bracket an opener needs on the top section

Why the springs are where people get hurt

A garage door feels light because the springs carry its weight, and that weight is far more than you could safely lift by hand. To do that, a torsion spring is wound tight and an extension spring is stretched long whenever the door is closed. All of that stored energy is released at once if a spring breaks or a winding bar slips. That is why DASMA puts it simply: springs wear out, and when they break, injury can result.

Online parts make it look easy. In practice, springs must be matched to the weight and height of your door by length, diameter and wire size, and a spring that is close but not right leaves the door unbalanced and dangerous. Winding requires the right bars and the right technique, and the mistakes are not small ones. If your spring has broken, our guide on what a broken spring means and what is safe while you wait covers the hour before a technician arrives.

Signs a do-it-yourself job has gone far enough

Stop and call if any of these happen while you are troubleshooting. The door suddenly feels heavier than usual, or the opener strains. One side sits lower than the other. You see a frayed cable, a gap in a spring coil or a cable off its drum. The fix you are reading about online calls for a winding bar, loosening a bracket at the bottom of the door, or unbolting anything connected to the springs. Or you have checked power, batteries and sensors and the opener still will not respond.

None of that means you did anything wrong. It means the problem is on the technician's side of the line. Leave the door where it is, keep people clear of it, and describe what you saw when you call; the details you collected will help us bring the right parts.

Handing it over without paying for what you already fixed

When you call, tell us what you already checked. If you have ruled out power, batteries and sensors, the technician starts from there. Every visit includes a full inspection of springs, cables, rollers, tracks, hinges, the opener and the safety sensors, and the technician explains what needs attention now and what can wait before quoting a price. Nothing is done until you approve it.

It also helps to have the opener's brand and model, usually printed on a label on the motor housing, and a rough idea of when the door and springs were installed. If you have an old invoice that lists spring sizes, keep it handy. Those details let us bring the right parts the first time instead of making a second trip.

If the opener itself turns out to be the problem, our comparison of belt, chain and wall-mount openers helps you decide between repair and replacement. And if you want to keep doing the simple jobs on a schedule, our guide to how often a garage door needs service lays out a monthly routine. We serve Dallas and the northern suburbs with same-day service and emergency calls around the clock.

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