How To Open Garage Doors Manually

Garage doors are a very important part of your homes and when it doesn’t work on you, it can spell all sorts of trouble.

Your garage doors, like every other mechanical system out there, will eventually need to be repaired for worn out parts.

After all, no machine can keep going without having its parts wear out along the way.

When your garage door suddenly stops working on you, it can only mean two things. Either you are stuck on the inside or stuck on the outside.

Getting stuck from the inside can be relatively easy to deal with but getting stuck on the outside can be quite a hassle.

If you have any other means of getting inside your garage without opening your garage door, a small passageway like a side door of sorts, then this makes your situation so much better.

However, if you do not have such a thing, there really is nothing you can do but call your local garage door repair company to help you out.

This is because opening your door by accessing the emergency hatch from the outside can be dangerous to you and those around you.

On the off chance that you have access to the inside of your garage doors, here is how to open garage doors manually from the inside.

Is learning how to manually open your garage door really important?

Before we proceed on how to open garage doors manually, let us first begin by answering this question — Is it really important that you know how to manually open your garage door?

Well, to answer this question, yes it is. Learning how to open your garage door manually allows you to lift your doors whenever there is a problem with your openers or springs or carriage and the like.

The knowledge of knowing how to do so gives you somewhat of an edge, as if you ever do end up experiencing it again, you will not have to depend on others to open your garage door and instead do it yourself.

Even if all you do is open it manually without repairing it, the fact that the door is not able to stop you from doing your day to day activities is in itself already a very big plus.

This is why you need to know how to open garage doors manually.

To help you understand further, imagine experiencing the different situations below:

• Garage power outage
• Misplaced or Lost remote
• Broken garage door components

With each situation mentioned above, the need to learn how to open your garage doors manually is imminent.

Meaning, if you do not know how to manually open your garage doors, you will be having more problems than just a broken garage door.

You will also be unable to go anywhere for the time being since you won’t open the garage door. Is that really what you want?

Opening Garage Door Manually

There are two main procedures you need to keep in mind when opening your garage doors manually – the first would be manually opening your garage doors and the second would be resetting your openers.

Each process is just as important as the other.

To start, first, you would need to access your garage door’s bypass switch.

This switch allows you to override your entire system and at the same time makes it possible for you to open your garage doors manually.

This switch is located on the inside part of your garage doors.

To locate it, find the hanging red rope on your garage door pull it. Doing this will release your opener’s carriage from the trolley.

Make sure that when you do this, your garage door is fully closed otherwise it may cause unwanted accidents.

Also, remember that if by any chance you feel resistance when trying to attempt to pull the emergency release cord, do not continue with what you’re doing.

Reach out to a professional and ask for help.

It is entirely possible that there is resistance because there may be something else wrong with your garage door.

Your door will stay in manual mode after you open it this way unless you reset it by reconnecting it to your garage door opener.

You can learn how to reconnect your door to your opener by referring to your user manual.

To reset your overhead garage door openers, simply unplug it from the power outlet for 30 seconds then plug it back in afterward.

For a better understanding of how the entire process is done, you may check on the video below to guide you with your task.

Prepare the things needed for the bypass; safety is also a priority

As you may or may not be aware, all garage doors have a bypass that you can allow you to open them manually.

It’s essential to know how to do this o avoid unnecessary garage door repairs that won’t necessarily be needed by learning this technique.

The bypass can disconnect the door from the power but still allows you to stay on track.

Once the bypass is disconnected, that’s where you can lift the garage door manually.

It’s also important to note that the door should be facing down.

Failure to acknowledge this may result in the garage door’s full weight crushing down to you and may cause severe injury.

If you’re not confident to do this, then hire professionals within your area to do this for you if you live in Ottawa, Kanata, or Ontario.

The technical aspect of how to open it manually

Right after you finished the first steps, now it’s time to get your hands dirty by pulling the emergency release cord, which is typically a red rope that is conveniently located in your garage door trolley.

The trolley is in charge of opening and closing the garage door.

After following this step, you are now free to open and close the doors.

If you are having a hard time lifting the garage door or closing it back into position due to it being too heavy, it will be an issue of a broken string.

This would entail you to replace the part yourself or, better yet, hire a professional to do this for you.

This would be one of the cases in which an expert is more suited for the job than you.

How to close the garage door and connect it back to power

So you’re done with doing the proper maintenance of your garage door, and you learned how to open it manually.

Now, what’s next? Of course, we need to teach you how to close it back correctly and without any errors.

First off, pull the release cord to the door; the reason is that the spring lever will compress and allow the two parts to reconnect.

Next is you have to attach the opener to the trolley, this is easy enough as you would just need to run the opener in a full cycle.

Meaning you need to open the garage door up and down.

After that’s done, you will hear an audible click, which means that they are now connected once again.

There you have it! Simple as pie.

Conclusion

Now you may want to save this article for future reference in case you might not be sure that you got all the steps down.

You can also share the information on this article with your friends who might need it more than others.

Overall, opening garage doors, no matter what type of system they use, it’s best to understand what type you own thoroughly.

Learning how to open your garage doors can be fairly easy to do. As long as you remember the important points, you should do just fine.

On the small chance that you are still unable to open your garage doors even with the steps above, then we recommend you ask for professional help.

If you live in Ottawa and are looking for a garage door repair company near you to help you open your garage doors for you and as well as repair any underlying problems with it, then we got the best choice for you.

Garage door repair pros is a garage door repair company in Ottawa that has been servicing the people living there and those in its surrounding communities for 15 years now.

They offer 24/7 garage door repairs which means you will not have to worry about getting your garage doors fixed even in the middle of the night.

You can contact them at (613) 909-8982 for further inquiries and clarifications.

What are you waiting for? Contact us now!