My Garage Door Opener has a Brain of Its Own

My garage door opener has a brain of its own. I will explain that later but first I must explain the circumstances that led to this important discovery.

Last Tuesday here in College Place we had a fresh snow fall, just enough to make the roads slippery. Because of that we decided to use our four wheel drive Subaru to go about our various activities. We opened the garage door and I turned the ignition key, but to my surprise the car would not start. It appeared that the battery had lost its charge, a problem I attributed to the fact that the dome light sometimes stays on if the driver side door is not completely closed.

Since we were in a hurry we decided to take the other car a Honda Accord even though it has only front wheel drive. So we boarded that vehicle and pressed the door opener button but we astonished to see that the garage door only opened about twelve inches, hardly enough for a Honda to exit without destroying the door.

So we now had garage door on one side that opened but a car that would not operate and an operative vehicle on the other side but a garage door that seemed to operating on its own in some capricious manner. After several attempts we did get the Honda, garage door open and got the Honda out. But then the problem was how to get that garage door closed by using the garage door opener in the car. That did not work well. In fact the door went down about half way, than rose again. On the next try it got down to about two feet from the floor then stopped. This was not at all satisfactory so I went inside and found that I could control the door by holding the door opener button down until the door was fully closed. I then exited through the side door of the garage and drove off to get on with our business. Upon return an attempt to open that door was met with the same capricious response as before but holding down the door opening button did not help. So once again I had to go inside and maneuver the door open using the inside door opener. So I now had two problems, a garage door that seemed to operate on its own initiative and a car that would not start, but was located behind the door that would work.

I decided to address the recalcitrant door problem first and in true masculine problem solving methodology I took random approaches to correcting various potential problems. That is, I planned to solve the problem first then identify what the problem was after. Men will appreciate that approach although its logic seems to escape most women. And, as one might expect I did not solve the problem. So I then corrected the dead battery in the Subaru by getting out the Jump Cables, opening all garage doors with some difficulty and after attaching the cables getting the Subaru to charge up. I let it charge for a while by driving it around for a few minutes then turning off the motor and restarting it. It worked fine so I put it back in the garage ready for my next foray into the community the following day. I had a nine A.M. appointment so got out early in order to get there on time. Early was good choice since the Subaru would once again fail to start. Therefore I renegotiated the Honda garage door and after several tries got it open and took the Honda to my appointment destination. However, my wife needed the car by noon in order to meet a hair dresser appointment which meant getting back in time for that. I managed that and together we were able to restart the Subaru and get it over to Bee Line Automotive Repair shop and later in the day at a cost of about $ 135.00 a new battery was installed and an ignition check was completed.

This left me then with just one problem, namely the garage door that was behaving on its own initiative. Since all else had failed I decided to consult the Garage Door Opener Users Manual. Men do not as rule consult manuals unless they are desperate and that seemed to be the case unless I wanted to call in a technical expert at great cost.

The back part of manuals usually has a section called troubleshooting and indeed this one did. It provided answers to all the questions I did not need answers to. It explained what to do if the garage door would not open or in the event that it would not close there was another advice section. However reading about these two options revealed for me that there were two other options available. First I found that the Garage Door Opener has a button called a Learn Button. By pressing it a green light will come on and remain steady while the opener conducts a self diagnosis. Based on the results of this analysis you are then faced with the green light flashing and pausing then flashing again until you stop it from doing that. While flashing however you must count the number of flashes before each pause because you need that information to learn what to do next. There six different options, each one corresponding to the problem you have identified earlier.
As you can see this getting pretty complex but does suggest that the Garage Door Opener is smarter than I am at diagnosing the problem. So I went back and re-read the information in the manual and established that the first thing on each of the problem resolutions was to check the Safety Sensor. That took some more research but I found that the Safety Sensor is a small lamp that emits a signal to a receptor both being located near the floor of the garage and close to the door. These two items must be in line to work effectively. My safety sensor was not well lined up because I had moved a barrel up against the receiver thus throwing everything out of kilter. By correcting this defect I was able to get the door working just fine by simple pressing any of the signal buttons and letting go quickly.

So now both problems are solved but I am still troubled to learn that I have two pieces of equipment in my garage either one of which is smarter than I when it comes to diagnosing garage door problems. The questions I have are 1. Do these machines talk to each other? 2. Do they communicate with other devices or organizations, and 3. Might they be agents of the Federal Homeland Security Department? I do not have answers to these questions but I am going to watch these Garage Door Openers in the future with a more guarded stance. I have no doubt about their brains just about their motives.

I said up front that this Garage Door Opener Brain question would require some explanation. I hope the explanation has been helpful to you.

May the Force be with you!