Owning your own home can create a sense of well-being, but it also means that you commit to a wide variety of home maintenance tasks. Some are fairly straightforward, such as mowing your lawn and raking leaves. If your home has a garage, and around 80 percent do, you can find yourself wondering if your garage door needs a repair.
As home problems go, that is one of the trickier problems to identify with certainty. That’s doubly true for first-time homeowners.
If you’ve found yourself eyeballing your garage door recently and wondering if it should go on your house maintenance list, keep reading. We’ll cover five signs that can alert you that your garage door needs maintenance service.
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1. It’s Slow
An automatic garage door in good working order typically only needs a few seconds for it to open or close. If the door opens or closes slowly or even slower than it once did, that’s a sign that there is an issue with the door or the motor. In either case, a garage door repair is in your near future.
2. It Closes Unevenly
The bottom of your garage door should remain perfectly parallel to the ground. When it closes, it should also touch the ground. Garage doors run along tracks that help keep it positioned correctly.
If your garage door looks a little off-kilter or there is a gap on one side when it’s closed, your garage door will need repairs.
3. Excessive or Odd Noises
Garage doors are often a little noisy when they open or close. After you use it for a while, you get a sense for what is normal for your garage door.
If you start hearing odd noises from the garage door motor or the overall noise level increases substantially, it’s a key sign that there is a problem with the motor or the door.
4. Random Open and Close
An automatic garage door should only open or close if it gets a signal from the garage door opener. If the electronics in your garage door are going south, though, the door may open and close on its own a random times. Call in a professional as soon as possible if that happens, because a randomly open garage door is a security risk for your home.
5. It Doesn’t Move
The most obvious of signs that your garage door belongs on your home care list is that it doesn’t move. Once the door is stuck, you’ll likely need help from a professional garage door company to resolve the problem.
Garage Door on Your Home Maintenance List
Even a well-maintained garage door will eventually develop problems that put it squarely on your home maintenance to-do list. Fortunately, most of the signs of problems fall into the fairly obvious category.
Garage doors that move very slowly, make odd or excessive noises, or close unevenly are all in some kind of trouble. Automatic doors that open and close at random have a problem with their electronics. Of course, a garage door that can’t move needs attention from a garage door pro.
Looking for more home maintenance insights? Check out the posts in our Home Improvement section.
