The wind drops overnight. By seven the next morning people are outside looking at fences and trees, and at some point somebody wants the car out and presses the button on the wall.
A meaningful share of the storm damage we repair in Broward happens in that moment rather than during the storm. An opener has no idea what state the door is in. It knows one thing: it was asked to pull, so it pulls.
Look first, in this order
1. Stand back and look at the door closed, from outside. Sight along it. Is it flat, or is there a bow in the middle of any section? Is the gap around the edges even top to bottom, or does one side sit further out?
A section that has been pushed in and sprung most of the way back can look nearly normal from ten feet away and be genuinely bent. The sight line down the face is how you see it.
2. Go inside and look at the tracks. Every roller should be sitting inside its track. Look at where the tracks are anchored to the jamb: a bracket that has pulled part way out of the wall, or a track that has spread away from the door, means the assembly took a real load.
3. Look at the springs and cables. A gap in the spring above the opening means it broke. A cable hanging slack, or coiled on the floor, means the door is not supported evenly.
4. Look at the bottom seal and the floor. Water that got under the door is ordinary. Water that got in through a corner where the door is no longer meeting the jamb tells you the door has moved.
If any of the first three findings are present, leave the opener alone and unplug it, so that nobody in the household discovers the problem on your behalf.
Then test it by hand
If everything looks right, pull the release cord and move the door by hand before using the opener. This is the single most useful thing in this article.
You are feeling for two things. Does it move smoothly through the whole travel, or is there a point where it catches, grinds or needs a shove. And does it stay put when you let go at waist height, or does it sink.
A door that binds at one point has a bent track, a bent section or a roller that has been displaced. A door that sinks has a spring problem. Either way, the opener will attempt to force its way through it and will make whatever is wrong worse.
The photo eyes, which will almost certainly need attention
The two small sensors near the bottom of the tracks are the most commonly disturbed part after a storm, and they produce the classic post-storm complaint: the door goes up fine and will not stay down.
Reasons, in order of how often we find them:
- Knocked out of alignment by water, debris, or by things being shifted around the garage in a hurry.
- Wet or fogged lenses. Condensation inside the housing is common after a humid night and often clears on its own.
- Debris in the beam path. Including things that blew in and are lying flat where nobody is looking.
- Water in the wiring. The wire runs along the floor line, which is where the water was. Corroded connections give you an intermittent fault that comes and goes for weeks.
Both sensors have indicator lights. One should be steady when the pair are aligned. That light is the fastest diagnostic in the whole trade and it is at ankle height.
What water does that shows up later
Three delayed effects are worth knowing about, because they turn up weeks after everyone has stopped thinking about the storm.
Cables corrode faster after a soaking, particularly if the water was salty. The bottom six inches, as always.
Foam-cored sections that took water do not dry. Water gets in at a damaged edge and stays between the skins. The evidence is rust blooming from the inside out along the bottom edge, months later.
Opener logic boards fail after surges, and not always immediately. An opener that has become erratic since the storm is usually a board rather than a coincidence.
The insurance conversation
Two practical points, offered as ordinary advice rather than as anything more than that.
Photograph the door before anything is touched, including the tracks and brackets from inside. A door that has been straightened is much harder to document afterwards.
Keep the product approval paperwork if you have a rated door. It is what proves the assembly was what it was supposed to be, and it is the thing people cannot find when they need it.
The money question
No prices, but the split is unusually clean here.
A realignment, a set of rollers, a cable pair, a re-track and pulling the brackets up is the ordinary end of storm work, and it is a modest visit. Sections and full doors are the other end, and they are also where lead times get long after a bad storm, because everyone in the county wants one in the same fortnight.
What moves a door from the first category to the second, more often than the storm itself, is having been run on the opener while it was off track.
What not to buy
- Do not buy a new door in the first week if the panels are straight. Get it levelled and running, then judge it standing square. Demand is at its peak in that week and so is the pressure to decide quickly.
- Do not buy a re-track with no explanation. If nobody says why the door left the track, it will do it again.
- Do not accept a repair that skips the anchors. The brackets took the load. If they are not checked and re-fastened, the strong part of the repair is the part that already failed.
- Do not turn the opener force setting up to get it moving. It is the one adjustment that disables the safety the door has.
The short version
Look at it, feel it by hand, check the little lights at ankle height, and only then press the button.
Most post-storm doors around here are fine and want an alignment and a set of rollers. That is a small invoice and a short morning, and it is a far better outcome than the one that starts with a button.
M&M Garage Door Service · (954) 787-3756 · mnmgaragedoorrepair.com
Serving Plantation, Fort Lauderdale and Broward County.