Garage door opens or closes on its own

Yes, it happens! Your garage door can actually open or close on its own. No, it’s not possessed by some evil power; there’s a natural and very innocent reason for this strange garage door behavior. Our Kennesaw Garage Door Repair crew offers these handy tips to correct these garage door antics and prevent them from happening to you again.

Imagine coming home from work for a quick lunch before heading back to the office. You’ve just made your sandwich when you hear your garage door open. You assume it’s your spouse or one of your teen kids coming home for a fast bite, too. Only it’s not. When no one enters the house, you go and look. Behold; your garage door is wide open and no other car than yours is inside! Strange as this scenario is, it happens, not only here in Kennesaw, Georgia but all over the country. 

Coming home to an open garage door!

Have you ever driven up to your home and noticed that your garage door is already open? At first you are annoyed that someone in your home was too lazy to shut it and then you notice; no cars are in the garage. Usually, this is caused by the same phenomenon as the previous example; a shared garage door opener frequency!

A what?

Garage door openers and remotes have a certain frequency that they use to communicate with each other so that you simply tap a button and your garage door opens, or closes. When a neighbor has the same garage door frequency as you, his or her garage door will respond to the same command to open or close. Newer remotes and openers use rolling frequencies so this unusual garage door activity won’t happen with those. It’s the pre 1993 openers that have remotes that allow you to set and change your frequency. On these older remotes, the frequency options are limited and it is not that rare for a neighbor to set his garage door opener frequency to yours, quite by accident. It’s important to remember that if you are experiencing unassisted garage door activity when your neighbor uses his remote, then he is when you are using yours. It works both ways! This is why it behooves the both of you to find out who this neighbor is and coordinate your remote codes together.

Electrical short in your transmitter

This one is easy to check for, but you won’t be able to fix it yourself. You might have an electrical short in the transmitter. You can test for this by removing the battery from your opener remote. Now, is your remote empty? (Free of the battery?). Good, now try and operate the garage door by using the wall button and not the remote. Does it work? Does it stay closed or open? If this works, the problem was the short in the transmitter. If not, there are other areas where your electrical short may be. You will need to test each location and do a process of elimination that will reveal the true source of your short. Be sure to check your garage door opener circuit board, wall switch, the wired keypad and the wall button itself. For these tests and checks, refer to your garage door opener owner’s manual. If you don’t have it you can probably find it online. Use your favorite search engine to find the make and model number of your opener system. Use the keywords that match these and add “owner’s manual” to the search. Most owner’s manuals are now online in PDF form and all you need to do to access them is look them up and either refer to them via the web or print them out for hands-on reference.

Probably your best remedy

If you’ve tried the above methods to fix your mysteriously opening and closing garage door, and it hasn’t worked, try this; call our shop or if you don’t live in the area, try working with an established, full service garage door repair shop. Let them know the symptoms that your garage door and opener are showing and let them fix the problem. After all; how much is your time worth? If you love do it yourself projects and have the time necessary to go through the above steps; great! But if you are busy or have better uses for your waking hours, let the garage door professionals handle this. 

Using a local garage door repair shop to correct unassisted opening and closing of your garage door is not only a good use of your time, but it also allows you to have your garage door, springs and opener maintained by a professional. Don’t look at this as an added expense but as an investment in your home’s maintenance. Your garage door professional can fix the problem and also spot any other problem areas that might cause you issues down the road!