10 Reasons Your Garage Door Won’t Close and How to Troubleshoot This Issue

10 Reasons Your Garage Door Won’t Close and How to Troubleshoot This Issue

Your garage door is a crucial part of your daily life, but you might not give it a second thought when it’s working correctly. If it stops working, that’s a whole different issue. When your garage door won’t go down, your day comes to a screeching halt. You’re busy enough — the last thing you need is a faulty garage door. 

What do you do when your garage door won’t close? If you want to know how to troubleshoot a garage door that’s not closing, you’ve come to the right place. To help you solve the problem, our experts at Continental Door have assembled this list of the top reasons garage doors won’t close.

1. The Opener Is Getting No Power

“Why won’t my garage door close?” The good news is that the fix doesn’t have to cost you hundreds of dollars and days of frustration. Your garage door opener needs electric power to open and close your door. The first thing you should do when your door won’t close is to check whether power is getting to your garage door opener. This problem has a couple of quick fixes that will only take you a few minutes to perform. 

Your garage door opener should plug into a nearby outlet on the ceiling or a wall. If you were cleaning your opener, it’s possible you accidentally knocked the plug from the outlet. It’s a snap to do this if the plug is loose in a ceiling outlet. Plug it back in if it fell out, then try closing your garage door again. 

If you still have it plugged in, you may have lost power or tripped the circuit. Ensure surrounding lights, electronics and electrical appliances are still working. If so, check your breaker box to see if you need to reset it to send power back to your garage door opener. After flipping the breaker switch back on, give your opener another try to close the garage door. 

2. Your Transmitter’s Batteries Are Dead

The problem could be as simple as your transmitter or remote having dead batteries. A garage door remote’s batteries can die at any moment, including after you’ve used it to open the garage door. If your garage door opener is receiving power but not responding when you press the remote, see if it needs a new set of batteries. 

First, try using your wall-mounted garage door opener button or outdoor keypad to close the garage door. If these don’t work, you could have a more prominent issue. If they still work, there’s a good chance your remote has dead batteries. 

Slide off the backplate or use a screwdriver to access the transmitter’s batteries. Identify the type you need and replace them. Opener remotes tend to use standard household batteries such as AA, AAA or flat disc batteries. Your local hardware store should keep these in stock if you don’t have any. Once you’ve reattached the backplate, try closing your garage door again. If it works, you’re ready to get back to your day’s agenda with confidence that your remote will work for the foreseeable future. 

3. Something Is Blocking the Remote Signal

Your remote has a small antenna that communicates with the antenna on your garage door opener. If something is in the antennas’ path when you try to close your garage door, your opener may be unable to receive the command from your remote. If you’ve replaced the batteries and the remote still doesn’t work, see if there are any obstructions. 

Your remote may have an external antenna housed within a small plastic bubble. Gently wipe the bubble to clean away any dirt or smudges that could be blocking your signal. Next, make sure you’re pointing your remote at your opener when you press the button. Tree branches or other natural obstructions could also be getting in the signal’s path. Clear them away and see if this solves your issue. 

Next, check the opener itself for signs of damage. If the opener’s antenna is broken, a functional remote still won’t close your garage door. You may need to call a professional garage door company to fix the issue. 

There’s also a chance that your batteries are weakening. You may want to replace them before they die. A remote with weak batteries might only work within a few feet of the garage door opener. Replace the batteries and see if this gives you the range you’re familiar with. 

4. Someone Has Pulled the Cord Switch

Your garage door opener should have a dangling red string known as the safety cord. When you pull this, it disconnects the garage door from the opener, which lets you open and close the garage door manually during power outages and other events. There’s a chance someone in your household pulled the cord switch without your knowledge. Or, you may have forgotten you gave it a pull earlier in the day. No worries! It happens to us all. 

The cord switch has two settings — pulled away from the opener for disconnection, and pulled toward the opener for connection. Try pulling the cord toward the opener first, as this should reconnect a detached cord switch. Then, try using your remote to close the garage door. If this solves your issue, your problem was a disconnected cord switch. If not, you may have a more severe issue on your hands involving your garage door opener. 

5. The Opener Has a Motor Circuit or Mechanical Failure

If the above troubleshooting recommendations didn’t solve your issue, the solution might be more complicated and expensive. Your garage door opener may have a motor circuit or mechanical failure. Both these issues will stop your garage door opener from opening and closing. Since they involve tinkering with your garage door’s inner workings, your best bet might be to call a professional. 

If something is wrong with your opener’s motor circuit, you may be able to get a replacement, especially if your opener is still relatively new and has a warranty protecting it from malfunctions. The problem could either be a factory error or an unfortunate natural cause, such as a lightning strike.  Call your garage door opener’s manufacturer to ask about their replacement policy. 

Your garage door gets a lot of use. Consider if you open and close your garage door twice per day — once when you leave in the morning and once when you come home. Assuming you work five days per week, that adds up to more than 500 times per year. If multiple people live in your household, chances are you use your garage door even more often. That puts a lot of wear and tear on your opener, so it’s normal for it to suffer a mechanical failure. 

Call a professional and see if they can repair your garage door opener. If you have an old opener, your best option may be to get a new one. 

6. Something Is Blocking the Door

There could be a simple reason your garage door starts to close, then reverses. The government requires automatic garage door manufacturers to equip doors with several safety features. These include a function that causes garage doors to switch direction if something gets in their way as they close. When the door meets the item, a resistance-based function trigger makes the door back up to protect the door and the object. This feature is essential in protecting children or pets at play around garage doors. 

Look around the floor beneath your garage door’s closing path. There might be a small blockage in the way, like a child’s toy or even a small rock from the driveway. Remove anything on the floor in that area and see if that solves the issue.

While you’re there, you should test this safety feature to make sure it works. Place a wooden block beneath the garage door and press the button to close the garage door. Once the door meets the block, it should automatically start backing up. If the door keeps pushing against the wooden block, press your remote to reverse its direction. You’ll need to call a professional to recalibrate this safety feature.  

7. The Sensors Are Misaligned or Obstructed

Most modern garage doors have another safety feature that uses photo-eye sensors for protection. These sensors sit a few inches above the ground on both sides of the door. They use tiny cameras to “see” if anything is beneath the garage door as it closes. If anything is in the photo sensor’s path, the garage door will not close. It could also stop in its tracks or reverse its direction to protect whatever is underneath it. 

First, see if anything passed through the sensors when you tried closing the garage door. Clean the floor beneath your garage door and try closing it again. If the problem persists, take a soft rag and gently wipe the photosensor lenses. There could be dirt or debris obstructing the sensors’ vision. You should also make sure the two sensors’ lenses are facing each other. If they are out of line, the garage door won’t be able to close all the way or at all. 

Check out Continental Door’s photo-eye troubleshooting video for more information on fixing this issue. 

8. Your Springs Are Worn or Broken

Your garage door opening system uses springs to get the job done. These can include one or two torsion springs above the garage door and two extension springs attached to cables that lift your garage door from the ground. Every spring has a cycle lifespan. If your springs have reached the end of their cycle rating, they could be on the verge of breaking, if they have not broken already. A broken torsion or extension spring may be preventing your garage door from closing. 

If you opened your garage door and heard a loud, gunshot-like sound, you might have a broken spring somewhere in your garage door assembly. These are essential pieces of your garage door, so you should call a professional to repair your spring issue. 

Since springs are under a lot of tension and pressure, you should never attempt to fix a spring issue yourself. You could suffer severe injuries if something goes wrong. If you suspect a broken spring is the reason your garage door won’t close, call a professional right away. 

9. The Roller Tracks Are Misaligned

Does your door slow down as it opens or closes when it passes a specific spot? Can you hear a squeaking, grinding or grating sound during operation? Your roller tracks might be out of line. 

Your garage door has little wheels on both sides that allow it to move up and down through the roller tracks. The roller tracks need to be straight and aligned for proper functioning. If one of your roller tracks suffers even minor damage, it could throw your garage door out of alignment, which can slow it down or threaten to stop it in its tracks altogether. 

Use a long level to see if any section of the track has gotten bent or misaligned. If you detect that the two sides of the tracks are not plumb, you’ll need to call a professional to repair them. Left unaddressed, this issue can get worse over time, leading to more costly repairs. Having straight roller tracks will keep your garage door opening and closing with ease for years to come. 

10. There Is an Error in the Limit Settings

If your garage door won’t close all the way, or it reverses after it touches the ground, your opener may have an error in its limit settings. The limit setting is the calibrated distance that tells the garage door opener how far it needs to send the garage door to reach the ground. This setting can drift over time and require recalibration. 

If the setting is too high, the opener will mistake it as an obstruction, which will trigger the automatic reversal safety feature. If the setting is too low, the garage door might stop before it reaches the ground, leaving a gap between the door and the floor. This error can be tricky to fix, so call a professional to recalibrate your opener’s limit settings if this seems to be your problem.  

Request Garage Door Service From Continental Door

If you’re still having garage door problems after trying these troubleshooting methods, request service from Continental Door. We’ve been serving the greater Spokane and Northern Idaho regions for over 15 years. And since we understand garage door issues can strike at any time, we offer 24-hour emergency services to help you in a crisis. 

We are ready to assist with all your residential garage door needs. Don’t let another day go by with a faulty garage door. With our help, you can get back to your typical routine with a functioning garage door. Contact us today to learn more about how we can serve you.