GARAGE DOOR OPENS OR CLOSES ON ITS OWN

Here's a somewhat weird scenario - you come home after a hard day at the office and as you drive up to your property you notice something strange and alarming at the same time; your garage door is open! Not only is your garage door raised, your entire garage contents are visible to neighbors, passersby and anyone else driving down your street. It gets worse - is someone in your house? You live alone so it's not like a family member is there and just forgot to close the garage door.

Relax - here's the problem!

If you have ever experienced a garage door that opens or closes on its own, you know how disconcerting it can be. You might be relaxing in the bathtub and then suddenly hear the garage door opening. You assume it's your roommate or spouse, but no one comes in the door. After dressing, you peek into the garage, but it is empty. What happened to your visitor? Relax; there never was a visitor - only your strange acting garage door! The problem is actually easy to solve and fix. Someone in your neighborhood is using the same garage door opener code frequency as you. It is usually a neighbor that either lives on your street or near enough to it for the signals to reach your garage door opener and trigger it to open or close; seemingly on its own.

How is this even possible?

Same opener code frequency happens more often than people realize. Newer garage door openers use a rolling code sequence that older opener models do not. If someone in your neighborhood reset their code for security purposes or by accident, it just might match your code due to the limited number of fixed codes available. Many times, it is the result of a new resident in the neighborhood who just happens to have the same code frequency as you do.

One of our Suwanee, GA garage door repair customers once told us that he worked at home most of the time and every day around noon, his garage door would open on its own. This worried him until he noticed that his new neighbor 3 houses down was coming home for lunch at the same time that his own garage door was acting "haunted." Together, they got to the bottom of the mystery and he helped her change her remote code to a different frequency whereupon the sudden openings and closings stopped.

Other factors

Your neighbor's garage door opener remote is probably the main culprit for your mysterious garage door behavior, but surprisingly, there are some other factors that can also cause this odd problem. Take your transmitter for example. It may need to be reset. This is easy and simple to do. You won't need to call for a Suwanee, GA garage door repair pro unless you really want to as you can reset it on your own. Here's what you do. Find the learn button for your opener. It is usually located either under the light cover or above the antenna wire that hangs from the motor head. The button itself will either be yellow, red, green or purple.

The learn button has dual functions. One is to program opener accessories and the other is to clear the opener's memory. This is what we want. Hold this button down for a few seconds. Soon the indicator lights will start blinking. As soon as they start doing this, press the learn button again and this will reset your transmitter. You can always refer to your owner's manual or if you don't have one, there is a plethora of videos online that demonstrate how to easily do this.