Garage Door Repair
An opener that has stopped working is one of the few home faults where a few minutes of looking will usually tell you what you are dealing with. Not because the repair is simple, but because the symptoms separate cleanly. A door that ignores the remote and a door that hums without moving are not two versions of one problem; they point at different parts of the system, and knowing which one you have changes who you call and what you should expect to pay.
The useful first move is to stop thinking of it as one machine. There is the radio side (remotes, keypad, receiver), the control side (wall button, logic board, power), the drive side (motor, gear, chain or belt, trolley), and the door itself with its springs and rollers. Almost every fault sits in exactly one of those, and a couple of observations will tell you which.
This single test splits the problem in half before you touch anything else.
If only the remotes are affected, work outward in order of cost. Batteries first, and change them even if the little indicator light still comes on - a battery can have enough charge to light an LED and not enough to transmit reliably. Then re-pair the remote to the opener, since the learn procedure takes seconds and pairing can be lost after a power event.
If a second remote and the outside keypad fail at the same time, the remotes are probably not the problem. Two things commonly cause that. The receiver in the head unit may have failed, which is a repair. Or something in the garage has started drowning out the signal - LED and fluorescent bulbs in or near the opener are a well known source of interference, and a bulb swap is a legitimate diagnostic step rather than superstition. A remote that works at two feet but not from the driveway is describing interference or a weak receiver, not a dead remote.
Check the obvious things properly rather than quickly. Confirm the outlet has power with something else plugged into it, and check the breaker. If the unit has a bulb, note whether it lights. Many openers also have a lockout or vacation mode on the wall control that disables the remotes entirely and is easy to switch on by accident - if the remotes died the same day nobody touched anything, that switch is worth a look before anything else.
Only when power is confirmed and the unit still shows nothing does the logic board become the likely answer, and that is the point where the repair-or-replace question becomes real rather than academic.
A motor that runs while the door sits still means the drive is disconnected from the door somewhere. The order to check is emergency release first, then trolley, then drive gear. The release cord is the free one: if somebody pulled it to open the door manually during a power cut and never re-engaged it, the opener will run cheerfully and move nothing.
Stripped drive gears announce themselves - the motor runs, and there is often a grinding note and plastic dust below the head unit. That is a standard repair on most units and does not condemn the opener.
The case to take seriously is a door the opener tries and fails to lift. Openers are sized to move a door that its springs have already balanced; they are not lifting devices. A door that has become heavy has a spring problem, and the opener is the thing complaining about it rather than the thing that is broken. Continuing to run it in that state is how a working opener gets destroyed by a door.
This is the safety system, and it is almost always either the photo-eyes or the travel settings. Look along the floor at the two sensors: they must face each other, and their brackets are mounted low enough that a bin, a bike or a knock from a car will move one out of line. Most units light an indicator on each eye when alignment is good. Clean the lenses, check that low sun is not shining into one of them, and confirm nothing is breaking the beam.
If the eyes are clearly fine, the travel or force settings have likely drifted, which is an adjustment rather than a part. It is worth being conservative here: those settings exist so the door stops pushing when it meets a person, and winding force up until the symptom disappears defeats the only safety mechanism the door has.
Opener work sits at the affordable end of garage door repair, and the spread inside it follows the same logic as the fault list above. Batteries, re-pairing, sensor realignment and lockout switches cost nothing but attention. Photo-eyes, a drive gear, a trolley or a remote are routine parts. A logic board or a motor is the expensive end, and on an older unit that is the point where a replacement opener starts to compete on value rather than just on price.
The one thing worth insisting on is that the fault gets named before the work is quoted, because "the opener is broken" covers a battery and a control board equally well. If the door itself is heavy, binding or has visibly uneven springs, that needs to be settled before any opener part is fitted - otherwise the new part inherits the same job that killed the old one. For anything past the free checks above, or if the door is not balanced, it is worth having the opener and the door checked together by a Houston technician rather than replacing parts one at a time and hoping.
It means the opener itself is almost certainly fine, and the fault lives in the remote path - the remote, its battery, or the receiver's ability to hear it. That is genuinely good news, because it rules out the motor, the logic board and the door hardware in one observation. Work outward from the cheapest cause: a fresh battery, then re-pairing the remote to the unit, then testing whether a second remote or the outside keypad has the same problem. If every remote fails together and the wall button is unaffected, suspect the receiver or radio interference rather than the remotes themselves - a nearby LED bulb or a new electronic device in the garage is a more common culprit than most people expect.
Usually not. A motor that hums or runs freely while the door stays put is describing a broken connection between the two, not a dead motor. The common versions are a stripped drive gear inside the head unit, a separated or slipped trolley, or a door that has been left disconnected after somebody pulled the emergency release cord. The release is worth checking first because it costs nothing: if the trolley is disengaged, the motor drives the chain or belt with nothing attached to it. The important caveat is that a door which will not move under power can also be a door the opener is refusing to lift, which is a spring problem in disguise and not something to force.
That is the safety system doing its job, and it is a designed behaviour rather than a breakdown. Two mechanisms cause it. The photo-eye sensors near the floor must see each other for the whole travel, so a bumped bracket, a cobweb, a parked bin or low sun in the lens all read as an obstruction. Or the travel and force settings have drifted, so the opener meets the floor sooner than it expects and interprets normal contact as hitting something. Sensor alignment is the first thing to check because it is visible - most units show a steady indicator light on each eye when they are aligned and a flashing or dark one when they are not.
The honest dividing line is usually the age of the unit and which part failed, not the repair price on its own. Consumable and external parts - remotes, batteries, photo-eyes, a drive gear, a trolley - are routine repairs at almost any age. A failed logic board on an older unit is the case where repair stops making obvious sense, because the board is the expensive part, parts availability drops off as models age, and a replacement opener brings a fresh warranty plus safety and security features that older units simply do not have. It is also worth knowing that opener trouble is sometimes a symptom rather than the fault: an opener straining against an unbalanced door will keep failing until the door itself is put right.