In this blog entry, the professional Charleston garage door repair and Charleston garage door opener repair team here A1 Garage Door Charleston will detail the main signs of misaligned garage door sensors, as well as the best process for realigning your garage door sensors.
What exactly are garage door sensors?
Garage door sensors are photo eye technology that can sense when an object crosses its path. If any obstruction like a car, person, or object breaks the infrared beam that is sent between two photo eyes, the garage door will stop closing, reversing direction to open up. This is an essential safety measure that ensures that there is no risk of somebody accidentally getting caught between a closing garage door and the floor.
How can I tell if my garage door sensors are not aligned?
Signs of misaligned garage door photo sensors include:
- If your garage door opens properly but won’t close properly
- If your garage door closes despite an obstruction being within the door frame
- If the photo eyes have dirty or smudged lenses
- If the photo-wise have damaged or shredded wires
- If a red light flashes when you press the button on your garage door remote
How can I realign my garage door photo sensors?
- First, turn off the garage door photo sensors by disconnecting your garage power supply. pull the plug for your automatic garage door opener. look for the fuse that feeds your garage in your home breaker box, and switch it off while wearing electricity resistant gloves.
- Loosen the screws in the photo sensor mounting brackets. don’t fully loosen them and remove the screws, but just gently unscrew them until they are loose enough that you can move the photosensors. test that you can move them by sliding the mounting brackets up and down, they should easily slide.
- Then, slide each garage photosensor down one at a time, as low as they possibly can go without the screws fully coming loose. you should do this with your hands and not any other tools.
- Then, attach a string between the photo eye sensors. get a string that is a few inches longer than the width of your garage opening. tie the end of one string to one sensor and mounting bracket very firmly. then stretch the string across your garage to the opposite sensor and tie it to it as well as its mounting bracket.
- Make sure that the string runs completely evenly and level. if it doesn’t, use your hands to rearrange the mounting brackets to make the string fully level from one side of the garage door to the other.
- After you’ve made sure that the string is completely level and even, tighten the screws in the brackets. test that you have tightened the screws enough by moving the garage door sensor to a different place. if they do not move, the screws are tight enough. if they do, realign the string of the sensors to make sure it’s level again, and then screw them tight.
- Remove the string, after you’ve confirmed that the garage door sensors are evenly aligned. Then, repower your garage, and test that the sensors work. your garage door should fully operate properly after you have realigned the garage door sensors. It is absolutely essential that the leveling factor between the garage door sensors stays completely straight. Basically, the infrared line between each of the garage door photo eye sensors has to send and receive information in a completely straight line.