Garage door safety sensor repair in Ottawa

The door starts down, stops, and goes back up, and the light on the opener blinks. That pattern points at the pair of photo eyes near the floor rather than at the door. The Ottawa branch repairs and replaces them from the shop at 46 Grenfell Crescent Unit A in Nepean, and (613) 845-9950 answers at any hour, which matters with this fault because it tends to show up after dark, with the car already inside. What the two eyes do, and the three things that usually stop them, is on the sensor repair page.

Freezing rain gets to the eyes first

Environment Canada's 1991 to 2020 normals for the Ottawa airport count 14.0 days a year with freezing rain or freezing drizzle, 3.8 of them in January. The eyes sit about six inches off the slab, facing into the opening, and whatever glazes the driveway glazes them too. A lens under a skin of clear ice scatters the beam, the receiving eye loses it, and the door will not close.

Two things follow from that. Let the ice go on its own, or warm the lens with your hand and wipe it; do not scrape it, because the lens is plastic and a scratch scatters the beam for good. And look at the bracket before you blame the eye. Meltwater running in under the door freezes in a ridge along the foot of the track, and a bracket locked into that ridge gets shoved a few degrees when somebody chips the ice away, which is enough to lose the beam.

The same station records 117.9 days a year with snow on the ground, so the bracket spends a third of the year at the height of a shovel blade. Salt film and the low December sun are the other two Ottawa causes, and the Ottawa opener repair page covers both, including the sun shield.

Finished garages and the wire nobody can see

Each eye is wired back to the motor head on the ceiling with thin low-voltage cable. In a garage that was bare studs when the opener went in, that cable was stapled along the wall. Then the wall was insulated, boarded, shelved or hung with bikes, and one screw or staple went through it. The eye is fine and reads as dead. When both lights are out, or one side died the week the shelving went up, the fault is in the wire run, and the fix is a new run of cable rather than a new pair of sensors.

Getting the van out

Call (613) 845-9950 and describe the two lights: steady, dim, blinking or off, and on which side. Add the brand on the motor head. That is usually enough to tell a cleaning job from a wiring job from a new pair. Repairs are booked same day. If the lights are steady and the door still comes back up, the sensors are clear and the opener is next: the close limit, the down force, or a door binding in its track. An opener with no eyes at all is a replacement, and opener installation in Ottawa covers that visit.