We have an electric garage door which is opening as normal however it won’t close – when I press the button on the remote I can hear a ‘clicking’ noise which is, I believe, the sound of the safety sensors tripping (there are two sensors at approx knee-height which will stop the door from closing if they are triggered). However there is nothing in their path. I have checked them both by removing the covers and cleaning the optical lenses which were slightly covered in dust/cobwebs but it’s still happening. The only other thing I can see that is a potential issue is that there was some water ingress after some heavy storms recently which dripped a little water onto one of the sensors but the insides seem 100% dry.

Any suggestions on where else I should be looking to trouble-shoot this?

Cheers

Can you not ‘bridge’ the various switches/sensors in turn to work out which one is recording a false positive (or negative if a circuit that should be made isn’t)?

Can you not ‘bridge’ the various switches/sensors in turn to work out which one is recording a false positive (or negative if a circuit that should be made isn’t)?

No, as I wouldn’t have a clue where to start 🙁

I’d check the price on them and if they’re cheap experiment by just swapping in new components.

Or get someone in who know what they’re doing 😉

You certain it’s those sensors, and not some kind of anti-crush thing that thinks there’s something the door is shutting on? That could be a simple need for lubrication?

Does it move at all? If not then like fadda says it sounds like something in the anticrush or similar. Is there a manual override that can be used to help kickstart it?

Do you mean it tries to do something THEN clicks or clicks THEN does nothing?

Is your car halfway in? That’d do it.

I’d be looking at lube / jamming also.

I can make it go down by using the manual over-ride (which it does quite smoothly) so I don’t think it is an anti-crush thing. However when I press the remote it makes no attempt to close at all, it just clicks straight away which sounds like the click I hear when I trip the sensors (every time I walk in or out of the garage they click as they beam is interrupted) so it *seems* it’s the sensors that are being triggered but there is nothing in their path. Unless it’s a poltergeist loitering in the doorway?

Also, if I manually move it down at all (ie, so it is half closed) it still won’t continue to close, it will just open up again.

I’ve literally just been into a local garage door dealer to ask about the same problem.

Mine appears to work fine but won’t go down on the button. He said it’s a safety feature. There’s a small box on the bottom edge of my door which is a proximity sensor to stop it from crushing stuff. He said there should be a small lithium battery in there and when it runs out, the sensor stops working and the door won’t close.

He also said if I try holding the ‘down’ button for 15 seconds it’ll work like a dead man switch i.e. it’ll move as long as I’m holding the button. Can’t wait to get home and try it.

I tried the ‘hold it down’ thing and it doesn’t work on mine. Also mine are hard-wired (old-school 1980s door) so no batteries in them.

Have you emptied a can of WD40 all over it yet? The internet tells me that will fix anything. Didn’t seem to fix to bowl I dropped on the floor last night though.

Mine was the 3.6v lithium battery (you’ll have to get it online) but now its detecting an impact when it touches the floor and keeps opening a few centimeters (or staying shut but sounding the alarm as it thinks someone is lifting the door). Bloody thing.

As mentioned earlier, mine doesn’t have batteries (or doesn’t seem to have any) as it looks hard-wired in. I will check again when it isn’t blowing a gale outside.

If it doesn’t have batteries for the sensor then there might be a problem or break with the wire or track that gets power to the sensor?