Garage Door Safety Feature Not Working

Sensors are a critical safety feature but can prevent an automatic garage door from working properly.

Garage door safety feature not working.

Until the sensor is working properly disconnect the unit and operate the garage door manually. Your garage door is equipped with special sensors that detect whether something or someone is obstructing its trajectory. If it detects an obstacle the door stops closing and automatically reverses to the open position. Sometimes the sensor becomes faulty and needs to be replaced.

An incorrectly adjusted garage door opener and sensor can cause damage to the garage door motor lift mechanism your house or worse a person or pet. If any object blocks the path of the infrared sensors the garage door opener will not activate or will reverse if operating. Luckily you can set most automatic garage doors to a manual mode to bypass the sensors. Important safety feature 2.

Picture of boy running toward closing garage door. The first feature is the obstruction sensor. It is an electronic eye mounted about six inches off the ground on each side of the door. With the door open press the button to close the door and then use a stick to break the beam of light between the two sensors.

It works as follows. The auto reverse feature is one of the most crucial garage door opener safety features. For home safety reasons you will want to get this issue resolved quickly. If your sensors or garage door motor is blinking or your door doesn t close it s a sign you could have faulty sensors.

Infrared sensors the second line of defense is a set of infrared sensors which should be mounted 4 to 6 above the floor on each side of the garage door frame. All garage door openers use a sensor light to prevent the door from closing when an object is in its path. Safety sensors include two mounted sections one on each side of the garage door opening. If your craftsman garage door opener fails to close the door properly you may need to disable the sensor light temporarily until you can replace the sensors.

Unfortunately faulty garage door sensors typically need replacement. Otherwise the garage door will not open or close remotely. A few minutes every six months or so will. All homeowners should disconnect all garage door openers that have not been certified as meeting the requirements of the voluntary ansi ul standard 325 1982 the standard calls for a number of safety features not found on earlier openers and also subjects new openers to more stringent safety tests.