Slow Opening Garage Door? Keep Reading
Garage doors, as inherently similar to garage doors, use a system of gears, pulleys, tracks, and springs in order to open and close themselves automatically.
When these systems operate together, they tend to work flawlessly and without much trouble.
However, as these pulleys wear out, lubrication wears thin, and springs lose their strong tension, the garage door system can experience a slowdown in its operational speed.
However, before one can begin to self-diagnose the problem, one must need to define the word “slow” and how it applies to the matter first.
For some cases, overhead door openers have speed settings integrated into them.
This adjustment speed switch is, sometimes, factory preset to the lowest opening speed.
The owner’s manual should be able to tell how to adjust the speed.
If one is still unsure on how to go about this, contact a garage door mechanic to help make the adjustments.
According to a trusted source, some overhead doors are able to open themselves up 50% faster than the standard overhead door.
Unfortunately, these doors take much longer to close.
When a door moves quickly, it has to be slowed to a gradual stop and, as the door travels upwards, there will be plenty of room for that.
As the door closes, it has to travel slowly to grant the sensors time to activate, preventing the door from accidentally closing on something or someone.
There are industrial style overhead doors that can move faster, traversing the opening of a residential overhead in about two seconds.
However, the cost of these types of overhead doors are 10-15 times the cost of a residential overhead door.
The aesthetics of overhead doors that utilize the industrial style are not aesthetically pleasing to look at in the perspective of family homes in neighborhoods and subdivisions.
More often than not, if an overhead door is running slowly, it’s probably because of the track, roller brackets, and hinges needing lubrication.
A few drops of penetrating oil on these moving parts can make all of the difference when it comes to its opening and closing speed.
With this, we can’t deny that overhead doors do have their issues, particularly when they open and close.
10 Things Any Homeowner Can Do to Start Manually Working on the Issue of Garage Doors
1. Check the setting of the opener speed. Most new garage door openers are already set to the lowest setting at the factory.
This can be adjusted by hand.
There should be a screw present that sets this speed.
If it is set to its slowest speed, turn it higher by using a flat-head screwdriver.
2. Reconfigure the access panel.
From there, get down from the ladder.
3. Next, test the door’s speed by opening and closing the door repeatedly.
If it functions well, one can conclude that the speed setting was the issue here.
If it is not working correctly, the door may need lubrication.
4. Close the garage door after.
Wipe away the grime and grease building up on all the rollers, roller pins, and hinges using a cloth that’s damp.
5. Apply penetrating oil (two drops) onto the top of the hinges’ seams, making it drip down into the seams.
Use a stepladder to reach the upper hinges.
6. Apply penetrating oil (two drops) into the roller mount brackets’ seams and the roller pins, both located on the door itself.
7. Move the ladder to one of the door sides.
Climb it until one can comfortably reach its track.
8. Apply a total of six oil drops on the track, beginning about one foot from the curve of the track.
9. Relocate the ladder to the other door side and apply penetrating oil (a total of six drops again) to the opposite track.
10. Repeatedly operate the door by opening and closing it to distribute the oil to all components.
The majority of “slow moving door syndrome” issues can be caused by lack of maintenance.
Qualified overhead door repair specialists can fix this problem.
If the overhead doors still function slowly, it is advisable to call for the help of an overhead door technician.
For those in Northwest Edmonton, Sherwood Park, Stony Plain, St. Albert, Glastonbury or Leduc, a wide selections of companies are ready to serve their locals.
