The list below is ordered by what each check costs you. The first four are free and take about five minutes together. If you get to the end without a working door, the problem is mechanical, and the last section tells you what it is likely to be.

One rule before you start: if the door moved strangely before it stopped, banged, slammed, or sits crooked in the opening, skip the list and read the broken spring guide instead. A door that failed loudly is not a remote-battery problem.

Free check 1: is it just the remote?

Try the wall button inside the garage. If the door opens from the wall but not the remote, you have a dead remote battery or a wiped code, both solvable tonight. Coin-cell batteries lose a big share of their capacity in a cold garage, so a remote that quit in January often revives with a $3 battery.

If the wall button does nothing either, keep going.

Free check 2: the lock button you didn’t mean to press

Most wall consoles have a lock or vacation button, and it gets bumped: a broom handle, a grocery bag, a kid. Locked consoles usually blink. Hold or toggle the lock button and try again. This one fix accounts for an embarrassing share of “dead” doors, and nobody is ever sorry to have checked it before calling.

Free check 3: does the opener have power?

Look for the opener’s light. No light and no hum means the outlet, not the opener: check the GFCI (in many DeKalb garages the opener shares a circuit with outdoor outlets, and a wet summer week trips it), then the breaker panel. Openers plugged in through an extension cord to a ceiling outlet also just come unplugged; vibration works the plug loose over the years.

Free check 4: was the release cord pulled?

If the opener runs, the trolley moves along the rail, but the door sits still, the red release cord got pulled at some point and the door is disconnected from the opener. With the door DOWN, pull the cord toward the door to reset the latch, then run the opener; the trolley picks the carriage back up on its pass. Only reconnect with the door fully closed.

The cheap tier: stiff, dry, or frozen

A door that opens with an effortful groan, or only partway, may be binding rather than broken. Two DeKalb-specific culprits show up every year. Rollers and hinges that have never seen lubricant get loud and sticky, which a silicone-based garage door lube (not general-purpose oil) improves in ten minutes. And after a freeze-thaw day, meltwater can refreeze along the bottom seal overnight, gluing the door to the slab; pour warm water along the seal or chip the ice free rather than letting the opener try to rip it loose, which tears seals and strips gears.

Where the list ends: the signs that mean call

  • The opener hums or strains but the door does not move
  • The door feels like deadweight when you lift it by hand with the release pulled
  • There is a visible gap in the spring coil above the door, or cables hang slack
  • The door starts up, stops, and drops back down

All four point at the counterbalance system: the springs and cables that carry the door’s real weight. The opener only steers; when the springs quit, nothing above your pay grade or ours will make the opener lift 150 pounds of door. That repair is winding-bar work with the door under load, and it is the one garage door job we tell everyone, including the handy, to leave alone. Describe what you found from this list when you call us; the checks you have already run usually let us name the part and the price before the truck starts.