Pro Handyman Blog

You press the button for your garage door opener and it hums but won’t open or close. What do you do? Well, you hope that the carriage is disengaged from the rail.

There are a couple reasons why the opener’s motor operates but the door doesn’t move. Look for a manual release on the rail of the garage door opener. It is a handle attached to a short length of rope. It is possible that the manual release was activated which will make it so that the motor runs but he door doesn’t move. This happens if, for example, you have kids that like to get into mischief, or sometimes the handle can get caught in a roof rack of a tall SUV. Pull the handle back and re-engage it, press the button and cross your fingers that it works.

More challenging fixes follow. If you have a chain drive operated by a sprocket, the gearing may have broken or the sprocket may have sheared off. You will need to take the housing off of the motor and look inside. If you see a lot of white powder, that is the remnants of the teeth of the gears, and they will need to be replaced. That probably isn’t a typical homeowner job and you may consider calling a garage door repair technician.