Power outages can often leave you with an unresponsive garage door. If that happens, here are some tips on how you can manually use the garage door in a power outage and how to reset a garage door after regaining power.
Close your garage door completely. Make sure that your garage door is in a down position and completely closed before disengaging it from the garage door opener. Do not disengage from the garage door opener if the door is open at all, as this is very dangerous with the door’s weight.
Pull the red emergency release cord to operate your door manually. This red emergency release cord usually hangs from your garage door trolley. Once your garage door is completely closed, pull the cord to disconnect from the electric trolley.
You’re now ready to manually move the garage door. You should now be able to freely move the garage door up and down, allowing you to come and go as you please until power returns to your home. Before resetting the garage door, make sure to bring the garage door back to the closed position.
After regaining power, pull the emergency release cord towards the door. To prepare the garage door to work on electricity again, pull the release cord toward the garage door in order to re-engage the garage door in its down position. Its spring lever will be compressed and the two mechanisms will reconnect.
Re-connect the trolley to the opener carriage. Reconnect the trolley to the opener carriage just by running the electric opener. This should return your garage door back to functioning after just one cycle of opening and closing of the garage door.
Please proceed with utmost caution! You should NEVER have to use brute force to open or close the door. And always make sure to have a partner help you out. Garage doors are extremely heavy and can be dangerous if not respected. We hope the power never goes out. But if it does, use these simple tips to work around the issue.
And if you have any other annoying garage door issues, we’d love to be your go-to. We do Garage Door Repair in and around the Columbus area, from Hilliard to Pickerington, Bexley to Upper Arlington, Worthington to Grove City, and everywhere in between. We’ve been a Columbus garage door staple for 30+ years. We’re straightforward and honest and we charge less than we should.
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