Garage Door Opener Repair

Does your garage door opener not work as well as it used to?  If so, you may be in need of a garage door opener repair checkup.  Garage door repair can mean either replacing or fixing your current garage door opener to ensure that your garage operates efficiently and steadily. What causes garage door openers to go bad?

The biggest thing that causes garage openers to fail is the amount of weight the opener has to lift.  Most older homes have either put a new garage door in their garage and never replaced the garage door opener to accomodate the new heavy door.  When a garage door opener does not have enough horsepower, the opener overworks and eventually burns itself out.  You can know if this is the problem if you push your garage door opener button and nothing happens.  If you don’t hear any turning or operation from the garage door opener, its a safe bet its burned out.

Another common thing that happens with garage door openers is that the teeth on the opener sprocket get clipped off or broken.  This happens when the chain is either too tight or does not have enough slack. The garage door opener will still make sounds and turn the sprocket when the garage door button is pressed.  This is a simple fix that can be replaced by simply replacing the sprocket on the garage door opener.  Once the sprocket has been replaced, it is important to make sure the proper amount of slack has been applied to the garage door opening chain.

The third way to fix a garage door opener is to just replace it.  Places like Lowes and Hom Depot have very competitive prices on garage door opener motors.  A word to the wise, make sure you have a friend with you to help you replace the motor as they are heavy!  Most garage door openers range from $100 – $300 dollars.

Posted on February 8, 2010 at 7:43 pm by greg · Permalink
In: garage door repair · Tagged with: , , ,

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