Stuck garage door in London, Ontario

On 7 December 2006 the London airport station recorded 40.0 cm of snow in a single day, the heaviest day in Environment Canada's 1991 to 2020 normals for any month. After a day like that, garage doors all over the city are held shut by wet snow packed against their outside face, and the opener is the first thing to find out. The London branch takes stuck-door calls at 1003 Farnham Rd in Westmount on (226) 270-9715. The general check order is on the stuck door page.

Clear the outside first

A garage door opens by rising up its own face, so snow packed against the outside is weight the door has to lift and friction it has to overcome. A newer opener reads that as an obstruction and stops with its light flashing. An older one keeps pulling until something gives, usually the bracket in the top section. Shovel the snow away from the face of the door and the strip of driveway right in front of it before pressing the button again.

If the door still will not move, pull the red release cord and try it by hand. Held at the bottom, it is frozen to the slab, and the way to free it is on the London opener repair page. Heavy as a car, it is a spring, and it stays closed until spring repair in London is done. Light and easy by hand, the door is fine and the opener is the fault.

Freezing rain in the joints

The same normals count 6.9 days a year of freezing rain or drizzle at London. Ice from those days does not stop at the seal. It coats the face of the door and fills the joints between sections, and a door glued at its joints cannot bend round the curve at the top of the track. The opener then lifts the top section on its own, which cracks a light section around the opener bracket. Let the joints free before asking the opener to try, and knock loose ice off the door face with a gloved hand, not a tool.

Go easy with rock salt near the door. Salt thrown against the bottom section leaves chloride on the steel, and the bottom section is already the part of a London door that rusts first.

Detached garages and a dead opener

Behind many older London houses the garage is a separate building with its power run out from the house. When a detached garage door will not open and nothing on the opener lights, look indoors first, at the breaker for the garage circuit, then at the ground-fault outlet in the garage, which trips in the damp. A door that then opens by hand but not by button is an opener fault, not a stuck door. The branch takes the same calls from the towns it covers: garage door repair in St. Thomas, garage door repair in Tillsonburg and garage door repair in Goderich, up on the lake.

Stuck halfway

A door that stops at the same height every time and reverses cleanly is the opener's travel limit, an adjustment. A door that stops somewhere different each time, or hangs crooked, is mechanical: a roller out of the track or a cable off its drum. That one stays where it is, with the cord pulled, and off track in London explains why.

Repairs are booked the same day. Call (226) 270-9715 or send the contact form with what the door did when you lifted it by hand, and whether a car is shut in.