Why won't my garage door open? How to tell an opener problem from a broken spring

When a garage door stops opening, almost everyone assumes the opener died. Sometimes it did. More often the opener is perfectly healthy and something else in the system has failed. A broken spring, a sensor that lost its aim, and a roller that jumped its track all produce a door that will not go up, and they are three different repairs at three different prices.

This is the sequence we run through on service calls around Colorado Springs, written out so you can do the first half of it yourself. Five minutes of looking usually tells you which bucket you are in.

Step one: what does the opener actually do when you press the button?

Stand inside the garage, press the wall button, and pay attention to what you hear. There are only three outcomes, and each one points somewhere different.

• Complete silence. No hum, no click, no lights. This is a power or control problem, not a door problem.
• The motor runs but the door stays put. The opener has power and a working motor. Either it is no longer connected to the door, or the door has become too heavy for it to lift.
• The door moves a little and then stops or reverses. Something is physically in the way, or a safety system is intervening.

Do not keep pressing the button hoping it clears. Every extra attempt against a jammed or unbalanced door is another chance to bend a section, strip a gear, or fray a cable, and it turns a one-part repair into a two-part repair.

Nothing happens at all

Start with the boring explanations, because they are surprisingly often the answer. A ceiling outlet is easy to knock loose when someone is moving ladders or storage bins, so check the plug, then check the outlet itself by plugging something else in. Garage outlets are usually on a GFCI circuit, and a tripped GFCI or breaker takes the opener down with no other symptom.

Next, separate the remote from the opener. If the wall button works and the remote does not, it is a remote problem: a dead battery, or programming lost after a power event. Also check the wall console for a lock or vacation button. It is easy to bump, and when it is on the opener ignores every remote in the house while the wall button keeps working.

If the opener has power, the outlet is live, and nothing at all responds, you are usually looking at the logic board, the wall button wiring, or the motor itself. That is where opener service starts, and it is worth diagnosing properly before anyone sells you a whole new unit.

The motor runs but the door does not move

This is the one people misread most often. The opener sounds completely normal, so the door must be broken in some exotic way. Usually it is one of two simple things.

The first is the emergency release. If someone pulled the red cord hanging from the rail, the trolley is disconnected and the motor is now driving a carriage that is attached to nothing. You will hear the chain or belt travelling the full length of the rail while the door sits still. Reconnecting is straightforward, but only do it with the door fully closed and only if you are confident the springs are intact.

The second is a broken spring, and it is by far the most common serious cause. The springs, not the opener, carry the weight of the door; the opener is really just a guide with a small motor. When a spring breaks, the opener suddenly has to lift a couple of hundred pounds on its own, so it either strains and goes nowhere, lifts the door a few inches and stops, or pulls it up crooked.

How to spot a broken spring from the floor

You can identify this one without touching anything. Look up at the shaft running horizontally above the door opening, or along the tracks on either side if the door uses extension springs, and check for:

• A clear gap of one to two inches in a spring coil that should be continuous.
• A loud bang from the garage earlier in the day or overnight that nobody could explain. That noise is the spring letting go.
• A door that feels enormously heavy if you try to lift it by hand, when it used to feel almost weightless.
• A cable hanging slack, or wrapped unevenly on the drum at the end of the shaft.
• A door that rises a few inches on one side and stays low on the other.

If you see any of those, stop there. Torsion springs hold a large amount of stored energy even when broken, and the bottom brackets at the corners of the door are under cable tension. Those are the two parts that hurt people. Leave the door alone and get a technician out for spring repair. It is a defined job with defined parts, and it is not a homeowner project regardless of what a video suggests.

The door starts down and bounces back up

A door that closes partway and then returns to open is almost always the photo eye sensors, the two small units mounted about six inches off the floor on each side of the opening. They shoot an invisible beam across the doorway, and if that beam is broken while the door is closing, the opener reverses. That is the system working correctly, so the job is finding out why the beam is broken.

The usual culprits are mundane: a bag of soil or a bike wheel parked in the beam, a sensor knocked out of alignment by a bumper or a snow shovel, a dusty or fogged lens, a spider web across the eye, late afternoon sun coming straight down a west-facing driveway and blinding the receiver, or a wire pulled loose from a staple along the frame.

Wipe both lenses with a dry cloth, clear the doorway, and gently nudge the sensors until the indicator lights are steady rather than blinking. Most brands use a solid light on both units to mean aligned. This is one of the few repairs on a garage door that is genuinely safe for a homeowner, because nothing on it is under tension.

If both lights are solid and the door still refuses to stay down, the opener's travel and force settings have drifted, or the door is binding somewhere in its travel and the opener is reading the resistance as an obstruction. That one needs a technician.

The door binds, scrapes, or moves crooked

If the door moves but fights the whole way, look at the tracks and rollers rather than the opener. A track bent by a bumper, a roller that has jumped out, a hinge with a lag bolt working its way loose, or debris packed into the track will all make the door drag, and the opener will eventually stop rather than force it.

There is also a purely Colorado version of this. Snow melts against the bottom of the door in the afternoon, water runs under the weather seal, and it freezes overnight, bonding the door to the concrete. The opener strains, and what gives way is the bottom seal or the bottom section. If the door will not budge on a cold morning, clear the ice at the base before pressing the button again.

Where the line is

Reasonable to do yourself, with the opener unplugged where relevant: check the outlet and breaker, change a remote battery, unlock the wall console, clean and align the photo eyes, clear ice or debris from the base and tracks, and tighten an obviously loose track bracket.

Not a homeowner job, ever: anything touching torsion or extension springs, the cables, the cable drums, or the bottom brackets. Adjusting spring tension requires winding bars and training, and the bottom bracket looks like an ordinary bolted plate while being one of the most dangerous parts on the door. Also on that list: forcing a door that is frozen down or off its track, and replacing an opener before anyone has confirmed the opener is what failed.

If you have worked through the list and it is a spring, a cable, a track, or an opener that genuinely will not respond, that is the point to call. Springs Garage Door Services is open seven days, Monday to Friday 7am to 8pm and Saturday and Sunday 8am to 8pm, and it is Eyal who comes out and quotes the work.

Frequently asked questions

My garage door opener runs but the door doesn't move. What does that mean?

Usually one of two things. Either the trolley has been disconnected from the opener rail, which happens when someone pulls the red emergency release cord, or a spring has broken and the opener no longer has help lifting the weight of the door. Look up at the torsion spring above the door opening. A broken torsion spring almost always shows a visible gap of an inch or two in the coil. If the spring is broken, stop using the opener and call a technician.

Why does my garage door start to close and then go back up?

That is the safety reversal system doing its job, and nine times out of ten it is the photo eye sensors near the floor rather than the opener itself. Something is breaking the beam or the two eyes are no longer pointed at each other. Wipe both lenses, clear anything sitting in the doorway, and gently aim the sensors until both indicator lights are steady rather than blinking. If the lights stay steady and the door still reverses, the travel or force settings on the opener need adjusting.

Is it safe to open a garage door manually if the spring is broken?

No. The springs carry almost all of the weight of the door, so with a broken spring you are lifting the full weight by hand, and a door that gets away from you comes down hard. Leave the door where it is, park outside if you have to, and have the spring replaced before the door is used again.

Can cold weather in Colorado Springs stop a garage door from opening?

Yes, and it is one of the most common winter calls we get. Meltwater runs under the bottom seal during the day and freezes overnight, bonding the door to the concrete. The opener then strains against a door that is essentially glued down, which tears the seal or bends the bottom section. Cold also thickens lubricant on rollers and hinges and makes tired springs more likely to fail on the first pull of the morning.