Is rust, or damage, causing problems for your Genoa City garage door?

This Genoa City garage door track hasn't
seen lubrication in years and rust is
beginning to build up.

The tracks on either side of your garage door guide the rollers on your Genoa City garage door panels as they travel up and down. If the tracks are bent or damaged, the rollers can hang up and cause problems with operating your garage door. Rust can also cause problems.

When new, assuming it was properly installed, your garage door rolled up and down smoothly in its tracks. The process was quiet and put a minimum of stress on your garage door opener. The process occurred almost invisibly. When you wanted to open or close the garage door, you pushed the button and didn’t even think about the garage door completing the task you had assigned. But, over time, that may have changed.

Increasingly, you notice as the garage door goes up and down. It makes more noise. It may even take longer. And, in the process, it puts additional strain on the garage door opener and all the garage door’s parts.

A badly bent or damaged garage door track may cause a garage door to get stuck. If damaged badly enough, the rollers may even come out of the track. If the latter happens, the door could fall on you or your car.

Rust can also build up inside the track to the point where inefficient operation can become stalled operation.

Fixing the rails can be problematic. If they’re bent, bending them back is often a challenge. If they’re rusted, getting the rust out is difficult if not impossible.

Damaged rails occur because, 1. Something struck the rail and caused the damage, or 2. Something else caused uneven pressure in the operation of the garage door.

The first reason that you might find rust in you Genoa City garage door rails is because they were not properly lubricated. Lubrication will keep the rollers moving smoothly while also fighting off rust.

If the humidity is high around your Genoa City garage, that’s a possible cause of rust in the rails. Or, you could have a leak that is allowing water to make its way into the tracks. While fixing any leakage is imperative, either of these issues illuminates the essential need for proper lubrication in your garage door’s tracks.

Lubricating your garage door tracks, as well as other moving parts of the garage door, includes using the proper lubricants applied in the right places and in the correct level. For this service, it’s best to call in a qualified garage door technician.

Why won’t Tina’s Woodstock garage door open?

It’s been a long day and Tina is happy to return to her Woodstock home. Her thoughts turn to soaking in a bath before a bite to eat followed by reclining on the sofa with a good book she’s reading these days. As she pulls in the driveway, the hits the button on the remote. If she’s timed it right, she’ll pull down the driveway and into the garage without having to hit the brakes; the garage door will open just as the car passes underneath. But, something is wrong.

Tina hits the brakes hard as she realizes the garage door hasn’t opened. It hasn’t even started to open. Now, stopped in front of the closed garage door, she hits the button again. Still nothing.

There are several reasons the garage door isn’t opening. Tina doesn’t care. What she cares about is that her relaxation is on hold. She’ll probably leave the car in her Woodstock driveway go inside and call the garage door repair service. In the meantime, she’ll try to get back to her plan for relaxing. It’s not the end of the world but it has caused a little frustration just when she expected to begin unwinding.

What could be wrong with her garage door? There are several possibilities, including:

• One of the springs that take up the weight of the garage door could have broken. The torsion springs make it possible for the garage door opener to lift and lower the garage door. Without the springs, the garage door opener is a 100-pound weakling waiting on the beach for someone to kick sand in his face.
• Your garage door could have tracks that are out of alignment. Usually, if this is the problem, it won’t cause the garage door to not move at all, but that is a possibility.
• The belt to the garage door opener motor could have broken or slipped off the pulley. In this case, the garage door opener may be running but it is disconnected from the drive that moves the garage door.
• The garage door transmitter may be faulty. If the transmitter worked with your garage door before, it should work now. But, things do break and it’s possible this could happen to your transmitter. You may need to reset the codes or replace the transmitter.
• Something could be blocking the garage door so it won’t open. It’s also possible that the garage door is locked. But, why would you lock your garage door if you want to use the garage door opener to open it?
• There’s another possibility but it’s so simple that you might not think about it; you may need new batteries in your transmitter.

Whatever the problem with Tina’s garage door opener, there’s no reason to stress out. She can check out the batteries, make sure the door isn’t locked or blocked. If none of those are causing the problem, she can call a garage door repair service to send someone to her Woodstock home. But, first, she should soak in a bath, have something to eat and relax with her book. The garage door will wait. Well, maybe she wants to call the garage door repair service first, but, either way, she shouldn’t stress.