Imagine driving home after a long afternoon running errands and buying a week’s worth of groceries for your entire household. You have frozen fish and meat cuts in the trunk, along with a gallon of vanilla ice cream (you’ve been thinking of making a frozen mudslide since morning). You drive up to your garage, press the remote transmitter…but your garage door won’t open. You try it again about four or five times before finally giving up.

It’s not the end of the world, of course: you can easily enter through your front door and carry the groceries inside in two or more trips. The distance from your driveway to your kitchen might be several feet longer than from inside your garage to the kitchen on the other side of the wall, but you’ll get the job done.

The point, however, is you’ve been inconvenienced when you installed an automatic garage door specifically to make it easier to drive in and out of your garage.

If your garage door is giving you the same problem — refusing to open or close when you use your remote control — here are a few things you can do:

1. Perform basic troubleshooting. These are the simple steps anyone can do to check if the malfunction is because of oversight or an issue that requires a technician.

• If your garage door opener is connected to a power source, check that it is hooked correctly and that there are no issues with the wiring.
• Check if the batteries of your remote controller need replacing.
• Clear the area near the garage door and make sure nothing is blocking the sensors. Most of the time, a garage door would stop closing halfway through because it detects something standing in the way (this automatic stop is a safety feature that prevents garage doors from accidentally falling on a person standing near the entrance.
• Clean the photo-eye of the sensors, in case they falsely detect obstructions because of accumulated dirt.
• Check the torsion springs, gears and sprockets, rollers, tracks, and other parts for defects.
• Do an ocular inspection and take note if there are parts in the garage door mechanism that looks odd or out of place.

2. Call a garage door repair service if the reason your garage door is stalling is none of the above. Don’t attempt to fix the problem on your own: automatic garage doors with faulty wiring, worn-out springs, weathered strips, misaligned rollers, or torn cables are best left to technicians. DIY-ing the repairs could make the problem worse because these parts need skilful handling.

There’s also the issue of safety: makeshift repairs are dangerous because they are often band-aid solutions that won’t hold. If your “fixes” suddenly give way, your garage door might slam shut or refuse to close entirely. Either scenario could put you and others in your household in harm’s way.

Another reason to call knowledgeable technicians is they can anticipate problems that might happen while repairs are underway. If, for example, your garage door rollers need repairing, they know that they need at least one more assistant who will watch and assist in case the panels become dislodged while the rollers are being replaced.

If your garage door refuses to close and you fear for your safety in the middle of the night, call an emergency repair service right away. Don’t hesitate when it comes to your family’s security.

If you need emergency garage door repairs and you live anywhere in Atherton Tablelands and Cairns, call Infinite Garage Doors. We offer 24/7 emergency garage door repairs. We do motor installations, track and strap replacements, recoding for remote controls, and other garage door services.

Call the mainline, (07) 4097 7117, or our mobile number, 0417 299 581, so that we can accommodate your request as quickly as possible.