Garage door won't close? Try these checks first

A door that will not close leaves the house standing open, and a surprising number of them are fixed in five minutes with a rag. Here is the order we check things in on valley calls, which of the causes cost nothing, and the published price of each one that needs a tech.

Look at the opener light first. If it blinks when you press the button, the two safety sensors near the floor cannot see each other, and that single fault is behind more of these calls than everything else combined. Wipe both lenses, clear anything sitting in the beam, and check that neither sensor has been knocked out of line, which is three minutes of work and costs nothing. If the light does not blink and the door simply will not move, you are looking at the manual release, an obstruction in the tracks or the opener's travel settings instead. A door that will not close leaves your house open, so if the free checks do not fix it, call (702) 744-7333 rather than leaving it until tomorrow.

A door that won't close is one of the most common calls we get, and a surprising number of them are quick fixes you can try yourself before paying for a visit. Here is the order we would check things in, and there are more of them on our safe things to try first page.

Look at the opener light

If the opener light blinks when you try to close the door, that is the safety sensor system talking. The two little photo-eyes near the floor on each side have to see each other for the door to close.

Clean and align the sensors

Wipe the sensor lenses, our desert dust loves to coat them. Then check that nothing (a trash can, a bike, a stray box) is breaking the beam. Make sure both sensors point at each other; a bumped sensor that sags out of line will stop the door. When they are aligned and clean, both should show steady lights.

Check the manual release

If the door does not move at all and the opener just hums, the trolley may be on the manual release (the red cord). Re-engage it by pulling the cord toward the door or running the opener until it re-latches.

Check for an obstruction in the tracks

Look for anything jamming the rollers or a roller that has popped out. If the door is off the track, stop, do not force it, and call us.

When to call

A door that will not close leaves the house standing open, which is why it counts as an emergency garage door repair rather than a job for next week. We answer the phone 24/7 at (702) 744-7333.

If the sensors are clean and aligned and the door still won't close, the fault is usually the sensor wiring, a dead eye, the opener's logic board or the door's travel settings. That is where garage door sensor repair in Las Vegas comes in, at $145 to $195 for a pair of sensors installed, and the diagnosis costs nothing if you decide not to go ahead.

Keep reading: Garage door repair in Las Vegas · What garage door repair costs here · Real Las Vegas job photos

If your door will not open rather than close, the causes are different and the sensors are not among them. Garage door won't open? The seven causes we find in Las Vegas covers that side, including the three that are free to fix.

If you have worked through all of this and the door still touches the floor and comes straight back up at the same spot every time, with both sensor lights steady, it is not the eyes. That is a force reading, and it turns up across the valley with the first cold mornings every year. Why a garage door reverses when closing sets out how to tell the two apart in about a minute.

Count the flashes before you change anything

A blinking opener light is not a general error light, it is a code, and the number of flashes narrows the fault before you touch the door. The legend is printed on a label under the opener's light cover or in the manual for your model, and it is worth thirty seconds with a phone light. The reason it matters: one flash pattern points at the eyes themselves, another points at the wiring between the eyes and the motor head, and the second one is not something a rag will fix. If you read the code and it is not the sensors, you have saved yourself the cleaning.

Why this happens so much more here than elsewhere

Two things about the Las Vegas Valley make safety sensors the single most common reason a door will not close. The first is the dust. Fine valley dust settles on a lens that sits six inches off a garage floor, and it does not need to be visibly dirty to scatter an infrared beam enough for the opener to call it an obstruction. The second is heat. The sensor wiring is usually stapled along the door frame and run across the ceiling, and years of summer attic temperatures make old insulation brittle, so a wire that worked last summer can read as an open circuit this one. Dust is the free fix. The wiring is not, and the two present identically from the floor.

If dust is the usual suspect in your garage, the same dust is working on the rollers, the hinges and the bottom seal at the same time. A single tune-up visit gets all of it looked at in one go rather than one part at a time, for less than the parts cost separately.

The three causes that are free and the three that are not

Every one of those figures is on our published price list, linked above, parts and labor shown separately, and you get the flat written price before any work starts.

When the sensors are clean, aligned, and the light still blinks

At this point stop cleaning and start eliminating. Cover one eye with your hand: the lights should change. If covering it does nothing, that eye is not reporting to the opener at all, which is the eye or the wire rather than the alignment. Next, look at where the wires enter the motor head and at every staple along the run, because a staple driven through the insulation is a classic valley fault and it usually shows as a door that works some days and not others. Past that point the honest answer is that it is a meter job, and it is the step where guessing starts costing more than calling.

Do not keep pressing the button

This is the one piece of advice that saves people real money, and it applies to a door that will not close just as much as to one that will not open. If the door starts down, stops and comes back up, the opener has read resistance and stopped on purpose. Sending it again against the same resistance is how a roller that has popped out becomes a bent track, and how a track problem becomes a panel problem. If the door moves part way and stops at the same place every time, that place is the clue. Note the height, leave it alone, and tell us where it stops; on the phone that one detail often decides which parts come off the truck.

A door that will not close is a security problem first

Everything above is about fixing it. This part is about the hours in between, because an open garage is usually an open door into the house as well, and in this valley it is also an invitation to the heat. Do these three things before you worry about the repair. Lock the interior door from the garage into the house, which most people never do and which is the only door actually protecting the living space. Move anything genuinely worth taking, bikes, tools, golf clubs, out of sight or into the house. Then pull the manual release cord and bring the door down by hand, and if it will not stay down, slide a locking pliers or a bolt into one of the holes in the track just above a roller so the door physically cannot be lifted.

Two warnings on that last step. Do not clamp the track if the door is already off its track or if a spring has broken, because a door with no counterbalance is carrying its full weight and can come down hard. And take the clamp out before anybody runs the opener again, which sounds obvious and is the single most common way a track gets bent the following morning.

What we actually do when we arrive

Worth knowing, because it explains why the diagnosis is free and why the price is written before anything starts. The first thing is a cycle test: we run the door and watch it, because the point it fails at is most of the diagnosis. Then the eyes get tested properly rather than cleaned, with the beam broken deliberately to see whether the opener reacts, and the wiring run checked at the motor head and along the staples. If the eyes are healthy, the travel and force settings come next, since a close force set too tight reads a healthy door as an obstruction. Then the mechanical side: rollers, hinges, the bottom seal and the track alignment, because a door dragging at one point can trip a force reading that looks exactly like a sensor fault.

At the end of that you get told which of the causes it is, what the part costs on the published list, and what the labor is, in writing, and if you decide not to go ahead the visit costs nothing. If it turns out to be the mechanical side rather than the eyes, the rollers, cables, tracks and hinges end of it is ordinary repair work at the same published prices, and the repair page linked above covers it.