Jennifer’s garage hasn’t been working for two weeks, so we got to her as soon as we could. We realized pretty quickly it was the child safety sensors on the floor!
If you have a project you’d like Erik to tackle, send us an email at GettingResultsAtHome@wkmg.com and next week Erik might just show up at your door!
We purchased:
Garage door child safety sensors
We brought with us:
Wire strippers
Wire nuts
Rubbing alcohol
Step 1
Clean the sensor eyes. What does your door pad display say (where you push the button to open your garage door)? If it says something like “sensor obstruction,” then the sensors are preventing the door from closing. You have 2 sensors, 1 on each side of the bottom of the garage door track. One sensor (usually the one with the red or yellow light) shoots an invisible laser beam across the bottom of the garage to the other sensor (usually with a green light). The laser beam is designed to detect an obstruction, like a child (which is why they’re often called Child Safety Sensors!) and protects the child from the door coming down on top of him or her. When the laser beam is not obstructed and shines directly across the garage floor, both lights on both sensors should be on and staying solid. Start by using some rubbing alcohol to wipe clean the glass eye of each sensor to make sure no dirt or spider webs are obstructing the laser beam.
Step 2
Adjust the sensors. Sometimes a sensor can be out of line, like if it’s kicked or hit with a ball or bike. Make sure both sensors are level and pointing straight across the garage floor at each other. If you have a solid green light on one sensor, you’ll know you have a solid connection.
Step 3
If you still can’t get a solid green light or if neither light in neither sensor is lit, you may have a bad sensor(s) or bad wiring connection. These are low-voltage sensors so you can try to diagnose yourself but make sure you unplug your garage door motor from the ceiling before you start. It turns out Jennifer’s sending sensor (the one with the orange light) was bad and we discovered this when we wiggled the wiring going into the sensor. So all we did was cut the wire, remove the old sensor, install the new sensor and then wire it together using the existing wire. We made sure to connect the black-striped wires together and then connected together the white wires after stripping the wire ends with a wire stripper. We used wire nuts to tie together the wire ends. We plugged in the garage door motor and it worked! No more sensor obstruction. If you’re not sure if your sensors are bad, you could detach them from the bottom of the garage track and cut the wires (leave enough wire to test each sensor!). Strip the wire ends and connect the ends directly to your garage door motor in the same place the old sensor wires are connected. If the sensors light up, then you know it’s the wiring that leads from the sensors, up the wall, across the ceiling and into the garage door motor (time to replace the wiring).
You just got results at home!