Winter Woes, Part Two: Help! My Automatic Garage Door is Stuck! (Open or Shut)

There’s nothing like a bout of icy winter weather to make one really appreciate the comfort, convenience, and safety of having an automatic garage door opener. But icy winter weather can also interfere with the functioning of your door opener, and prevent it from opening properly and/or closing for full security.

There are a number of possibilities when this happens. The first thing to check is your remote — does it need fresh batteries? If you can’t open or close the door with the back-up keypad, then you know it’s something else.

If you have had a power outage, check to make sure that the opener has reconnected correctly, and that there isn’t a fuse blown or a circuit breaker clicked off. If that all looks fine, check the sensors that trigger your door’s function. There should be one red light and one green light visible. Sometimes moisture condensing on the lens needs to be removed by wiping very gently with a soft cloth, taking care not to change the position of the sensors.

As mentioned in Part One, condensation or rain and sleet can freeze the door to the floor or freeze the hinges.

If the door is opening but hesitating or sticking, the problem may be that the lubricant used for its moving parts is too thick and/or cold. Most lubricants are meant for warm weather, so congealed grease can actually bog down the mechanisms or misaligned the rollers. On the other hand, lubrication is absolutely essential to protect your door’s parts, so it’s a matter of finding the right balance. The old lubricant may need to be carefully removed and replaced with a lighter coating of silicon lubricant.

When it is very cold, metal parts in the door’s mechanism may actually contract or seize up which isn’t a phenomenon that you can fix, but adding additional silicon lubricant to the springs, screw drive and ball bearings may allow the opener to function anyhow. Again, it’s a balancing act to apply just the right amount of lubricant.

If you are not 100% sure of what you’re doing, or if you don’t have the time or inclination to do this yourself, a garage door service technician can do it for you.