How to Manually Open a Garage Door?

Imagine just getting home from work and a storm has knocked out the power to your home. Now it is impossible for you to open your garage door with your remote, so getting soaked is likely going to happen. You park your car and run inside your home so that you can manually open the garage door and safely park your car. How to manually open a garage door? This involves understanding where the emergency release cord is and what steps are necessary.

Let’s take a look below at the details involved with manually opening and closing a garage door.

How Do I Open It From The Outside?

Opening your garage door from the outside can be a little more tedious than opening it from the inside. If you lose power you will need to know how to manually open your garage door from inside and outside your home. Let’s take a look below at the recommended steps.

  • Find the emergency release kit – At the top of your garage door, there is a small lock. The lock keeps the emergency release cable. Keep in mind, you need the key to the lock to release the door.
  • Emergency release cord – Use the key to open the lock tumbler and locate the release cable. Pull the emergency release cord to trigger the release mechanism and place your garage door into its manual mode.
  • Unlock the garage door – Use your key to unlock the next lock that is responsible for keeping the door closed. Turn the handle on the door so it is facing a vertical position.
  • Push the door up – Grab the exterior garage door handle and lift the door. Once the door is open, ensure that it will stay open. You wouldn’t want to drive your car into the garage and have the door close on top of the car.
  • Close the door – Once you are successfully in the garage, you can close the door from the inside of the garage and place it in the closed position.

How Do I Open It From The Inside?

Opening your garage door from inside the garage is a fairly simple task. Let’s take a look below at what the steps are to accomplish this task.

  • Unlock the garage door – In some cases, homeowners use the bottom latches on the garage door to keep intruders out. You will need to unlock the latches to open the door.
  • Unplug the electric garage door opener – Unplug the garage door opener. This allows you to ensure that you won’t get shocked or electrocuted if the power is restored.
  • Emergency release cord – Find the red handle that hangs from the center rail. The red cord attaches the garage door to the trolley of the center rail.
  • Pull down on the cord – Once you have located the release lever, pull down on the cord to disconnect the door from the trolley.
  • Push or pull up – Lift the garage door by using the bars or center garage door handle to elevate the door up and open. Be sure the door is going to stay open or place some locking grips under the bottom wheels to keep the door in place.
  • Close the door – Once you have pulled your car into the garage, you can pull the door closed and lock the door with the manual locking bars.

Other Recommended Maintenance

Now that you know how to manually open and close your garage door, you should consider reading up on how to tighten the garage door springs. This is a necessary part of garage door maintenance. You can always hire a professional if you aren’t comfortable with this task.

Next, another good part of garage door maintenance is understanding how to lubricate your garage door. This is necessary to keep the parts from sticking and not working properly. Keeping the parts greased and lubricated is necessary for their longevity.

Lastly, if all else fails with your garage door maintenance, consider researching when to replace your garage door. Planning for this project allows you to save your funds and not worry about the added expense.

When Do I Call A Professional?

When it comes to garage doors, you will almost always call on a professional garage door installation company to troubleshoot any of your issues. Additionally, reach out to your local home inspection team. If you are needing to manually open and close your garage door, you might have other underlying issues. Using your local home inspection team will allow you to find out exactly what’s going on with your garage door.

Conclusion

Garage doors can be finicky. They have so many working parts, that if not maintained, could break down and cause some issues. Consequently, most homeowners don’t realize the necessity to clean and grease the wheels and track of the garage door. If you want longevity out of your garage door and do not want to open and close it manually, simply maintain it. Reach out to Blue Guardian Home Inspections for a full home inspection in Kendall, Kane, Dupage, and LaSalle Counties of Illinois.

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