Garage door won't open (or won't close)? Run these checks first
A garage door that won’t move has one of five problems, and you can sort out which one from the garage floor in about three minutes - no tools, no ladder. Two of them are free fixes. One of them means you should back away from the door entirely.
First: does the opener respond at all?
Press the wall button and listen.
Total silence means the opener has no power. Check the outlet - openers share circuits with garage GFCI outlets, and a tripped GFCI (that little button popping out on the outlet by the door) is the single most common “broken door” in any Indiana neighborhood after a storm. Press reset, try again. Free fix number one.
The opener runs but the door stays put - keep reading, and stop pressing the button. Whatever is wrong, the motor grinding against it makes it worse.
The loud-bang test
Think back: did anyone hear a single loud bang from the garage in the last day or two? People blame slammed doors, fallen shovels, cars backfiring on Sycamore Street. It was probably your torsion spring breaking.
Look at the fat coil spring on the shaft above the door. A healthy spring is one continuous coil; a broken one has a clean two-inch gap, as if someone cut it with shears. A door with a broken spring weighs 150-300 dead pounds, and the opener physically cannot lift it - that’s the hum-then-give-up sound.
If you see the gap: stop. Don’t run the opener again, and don’t try to lift the door by hand. This is the repair where DIY sends people to the emergency room, and the professional fix is a couple hundred dollars, same-day. That’s the one where you call.
The door reverses before it hits the floor
That’s not a broken door - it’s a safety system doing its job with bad information. The two photo-eye sensors at ankle height beside the tracks must see each other; when a rake handle, a snow shovel, or six inches of Christmas-box overflow blocks the beam, the door refuses to close and reverses instead.
Clear the floor near both tracks, then look for the little LEDs on each sensor - solid lights on both means they’re aligned; a blinking one means give it a gentle nudge until it goes solid. Free fix number two.
The door is crooked in the opening
If one side of the door hangs lower than the other, a lift cable has snapped or jumped its drum, and the door is racking sideways in the track. Do not run it again - a racked door tears up panels and track fast, and it’s held in place by whatever tension is left. Keep kids and pets out of the garage and call it in as urgent.
The manual-release cord got pulled
If the opener runs happily but nothing at all happens at the door - no straining, no shudder - check whether the red-handled cord hanging from the rail got yanked (usually by a car antenna or a tall load). That disconnects the door from the opener. With the door fully closed, pull the cord toward the door until the trolley clicks, then run the opener; it will re-engage on the next cycle. Free-ish fix number three.
The three-minute summary
| What you found | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Dead outlet / tripped GFCI | Power, not the door | Reset, free |
| Blocked or blinking sensors | Safety beam interrupted | Clear and align, free |
| Pulled release cord | Door disconnected from opener | Re-engage, free |
| Gap in the spring coil | Broken torsion spring | Stop. Call. |
| Door hanging crooked | Snapped or jumped cable | Stop. Call - urgent. |
Two of the five cost nothing. The other three are exactly what we do all day across Howard County - and the number comes in writing before the work does.