Emergency garage door repair

Emergency garage door repair is for a door that cannot be left until a booked day: one stuck open, one that will not close, a snapped spring or cable, a door off its track or hit by a car, or a dead opener with the car inside.

Stop the opener, keep everyone out of the opening, and call the nearest branch.

Protech takes those calls from three branches, in Ottawa, Mississauga and London. The Ottawa and Mississauga lines are answered around the clock. Repairs are booked same day. Each branch page carries its own number and what its own city does to a door.

What counts as a garage door emergency

Five faults leave a door unsafe to run or impossible to secure for the night, and each one shows itself from inside the garage without anything being touched.

The sixth is not a fault in the door. The opener has died, often in a power cut, and the car is on the wrong side of it. That one usually has a safe answer, set out below.

Noise, a slow door, a torn bottom seal or a remote that has quit while the wall button still works are wear. They can wait for a booked visit, and common garage door problems matches each to its cause.

Why the first move is to stop

Most of the damage on an emergency call happens after the fault, not during it. An opener asked to lift a door with a snapped spring strips its own gear kit. A door run with a roller out of its track bends the track and creases the section above the roller. Each extra press of the button adds a part to the repair, and some presses add a door.

What each fault does if it is pushed is covered on garage door spring repair and garage door off track. A door that stops and reverses is usually the safety sensors seeing something, and they are the one emergency a reader can sometimes clear alone: a lens wiped, a bracket nudged back until both lights are steady.

How to make the door safe before the technician gets there

In this order. None of it needs a ladder or a tool.

1. Stop pressing the button, and unplug the opener if the plug can be reached without standing under the door. That stops anyone else in the house from running it.

2. Keep people, pets and cars out of the opening. A door with a broken spring or cable is held by less than it looks.

3. Leave the red release cord alone unless the door is fully closed. Chamberlain, whose openers also sell as LiftMaster, says in its instructions for manual operation to "ONLY use the emergency release when the garage door is fully CLOSED, if possible", and that a door on weak or broken springs "may fall rapidly and without warning".

4. Do not drive out under a door that is crooked, part open, or held up by the opener alone.

5. If the car is shut in, do not start it and let it idle while you wait. Health Canada's carbon monoxide guidance says not to idle a vehicle in the garage even with the garage door open, and to keep the door between the house and the garage closed.

6. Photograph the door from inside: the spring above the opening, both cable drums, both bottom corners and the track where anything left it. Those pictures tell the branch which parts to load.

If anyone has been hurt, call 911 before anything else.

What to do when the power is out and the car is inside

This is the one emergency the release cord is made for. Garaga, whose doors Protech installs, sets out the steps in its guide to opening a garage door in a power outage: with the door fully closed, pull the red cord to disconnect the trolley, then raise the door by the lifting handle on the bottom section.

The lift is the test. A door on sound springs comes up with a steady pull. If it has to be forced, Garaga reads that as a spring that has broken or worn out, and says to lower the door slowly and call.

Once the car is out, close the door and reconnect the trolley, which clicks as it engages; if you lock the door with its slide lock instead, unlock it before the opener runs again.

A generator brought out for the outage stays outside. Health Canada says never to run a fuel-burning generator in the garage, and to keep it at least 6 metres from the house.

What the repair involves

The door is clamped so it cannot move, the tension comes off in order, and the fault is fixed at its cause: springs replaced as a pair on a two-spring door, cables reset to equal length on their drums, rollers back in a straightened or new track, and a struck section inspected for creases.

The door is balanced by hand before the opener is reconnected, and the two checks worth watching before the van leaves, the balance and the safety reversal, are set out under garage door spring repair.