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4 Reasons for an Overhead Door Opening and Closing On Its Own

You may feel like you’re going crazy. You are SURE you closed the garage door when you left, but you come home, and it’s open! You can’t imagine how that could have possibly happened.

Or perhaps you heard it happen. You are home and hear that familiar sound of your garage door opening, but there is no one around who could be opening it.

Is your garage haunted?

Probably not. While our team here at Cheney Door Company are not experts in paranormal activity, we do know a thing or two about garage doors (after all, we’ve been installing them in Kansas for 50 years). There are several common reasons that can cause a garage door to open or close on its own.

Eliminate the Obvious

If you are reading this, then you’ve probably already eliminated the most likely suspects. And by suspects, we mean the other people in your home with access to your garage door.

• Did your spouse come home for lunch and forget to close it?
• Did your kid go out through the garage and left it up?
• Did someone put their remote somewhere that caused them to hit the button accidentally? Perhaps they put the remote in their pocket, in a purse, or on a car seat that gets covered in clutter. Unlike accidentally hitting the car alarm button on your key fob, accidentally hitting the garage door opener may go unnoticed at the time. You may need to do some sleuthing work to ensure no one with a remote isn’t just the real cause behind your possessed garage door.

There is another common problem that you should make sure to eliminate. Is this an issue with your door reversing?

To find out, do this check for a few days. When you shut and open your door, watch until it completely opens or closes and ensure it stays that way. If it reverses directly right upon (or just before or after) completely opening or closing, there are different reasons why that could be happening.

When you are sure that all the people who could be operating your garage door are not behind this mystery, these are the four things you should check.

We’ll go over the top 4 reasons behind your spooky garage door. We will also list the troubleshooting steps to resolve each of the possible problems. There are many easy enough for just about any homeowner to do on their own. Other types of repairs should be left to a garage door repair professional. Cheney Door Company is here to provide repair service for any garage door (even if we didn’t install it).

4 Causes & Fixes for a Possessed Garage Door

Reason #1: An issue with your remote, wall control or keypad

The batteries may be dying. Change the batteries and see if that fixes the problem. This is the easiest and quickest step, but not just that. A lot of the following steps won’t work without it.

Your remote control may have an LED light on it. If so, you will see that the battery is dead just because the light is out.

One (or more) of the devices may be old or malfunctioning. You can try to replace that device to resolve the door opening and closing by itself.

Reason #2: A wiring problem

There is a decent amount of wiring in your garage door system. Wires run between the motor unit, the door, and the safety sensors. A short circuit somewhere along your system can cause the door to open or close on its own.

Something as small as a mouse chewing on any exposed wires is enough to cause this sort of problem. Another reason why this happens is when wires are continually rubbing against nails or other things that cause damage over time.

If you suspect this is your problem, call for professional repair.

Reason #3: Electrical circuits have gone haywire

This situation can happen from power outages or power surges. Also, weather events can cause this, like some of the many powerful storms that run through Kansas every year.

You will want to request service from a professional garage door repair company to fix this.

Reason #4: Mischievous Neighbors (whether they mean to or not)

Was your garage door installed before 1993? If so, your neighbors could be the real cause of your possessed garage door! If they are, they probably are doing it entirely by accident.

These older garage doors use a signal easily reproduced (or already exists) with other garage door remotes. Your neighbor’s code could be the same as yours! In addition, other items could also be transmitting the same frequency, including appliances, computers, motion detectors, wireless doorbells, and wi-fi networks.

To fix it, you can try changing your opener’s code or frequency. This is relatively easy for a homeowner to do themselves in an hour or two, especially if they have the instruction manual.

Or, you may want to consider updating your garage door opener to a modern one that will increase your home security and provide you with a more functioning and reliable system.

Don’t Delay Fixing a Phantom Garage Door

Having a garage door that opens on its own isn’t just annoying. It’s a security problem.

In America, a home burglary happens every 18 seconds. And what surprises many is the majority of these burglaries occur between 10 am and 3 pm. So being gone all day at work with your garage door open is a big problem. This is the main reason why you do not want to delay getting this problem fixed.

If you have an older garage door, particularly one made before 1993, you should consider getting the frequency code changed. Burglars have used this vulnerability to gain access to homes. By simply using the same frequency code, they can get into homes with these older garage doors.

In addition to having a properly working garage door that doesn’t open on its own at night, you want to be sure all garage door remotes are secure. Take, for example, this Kansas family who had their car stolen from inside their shut garage last winter because the criminals were able to get their hands on a remote device.

If you need any help repairing your garage door opener, contact Cheney Door Company. In Wichita, call us at (316) 262-2098. We are available for 24/7 emergency service.

• For our Salina office, call (785) 820-8366.
• For our Hutchinson office, call (620) 669-9306.