Automatic garage doors are an extremely common feature of the domestic environment these days. When many people think of or encounter a problem requiring garage door repair they assume it is something for which they will have to call a technician or repair professional to come out to the house and service the garage door opener mechanism. While in some cases this will be necessary, there are a number of things you, the garage and homeowner, can probably handle on your own. The following is an overview of the types of problems you might experience with your garage door and some approaches you can take to fixing them.

Before getting too fancy with anything, you should check commonly overlooked and simple causes of your garage door problem, or what might be called problems of the “duh” type. These are things that can result from simple forgetfulness or accidental actions. You would feel very silly if you had a technician come out (and you had to pay for the visit) if any of the following problems were actually the case. So check these types of possibilities before any others:

It’s possible that the garage door opener – the box like mechanism situated near the ceiling which is responsible for opening and closing the door itself – is not plugged in. This can be because someone simply forgot to plug it in, or because it has slipped out of a loose socket. An AC cord usually exits the machine and plugs into an outlet on the ceiling, or perhaps to an extension cord that runs to a wall outlet. Check to see if this is plugged in and you may have the solution to why your door won’t open or close right there.

A side note here is that even if the opener is plugged in you can try unplugging and plugging it in again. This will reset the sensors and this can be part of your problem.

There can be a variety of problems of an electrical nature with garage doors as well. Just one example of this might be, say, wires that have become exposed, broken, or have shorted out. Problems of this may or may not be able to be fixed by a homeowner, but often they can. Many such repairs require only ordinary household items like wire crimpers, electrical tape, wire nuts or wire sleeves, and so on.

Mechanical problems with garage doors and openers are common as well. These can include things like a jammed control arm, stripped plastic gears on the box itself, and problems with latches or locks. Many of these problems can be fixed by replacing a part. How easy this is for a handy homeowner to do is based on the part and the handiness of the homeowner, but there are indeed parts easily available for many commercially easily available garage doors, and many of these are not very hard to install.