why does “holding down the button” make a broken garage door work?

Question

With a functioning garage door, you press the button once and it opens/closes all the way.

Old garage doors sometimes stop or reverse and don’t seem to work with a single press, but holding down the button always seems to work. Why?

In: 0

Answer 1

There are built in safety features that are in effect when you press the button once. If the door detects resistance while closing (like crushing the head of a 5 year old who asks alot of questions) it reverses. If an object moves into the optical sensor range while the door is closing, it reverses to avoid a collision.

Pushing and holding the button overrides these safety features.

To make the door again work properly with a single touch, you need to adjust the sensitivity of the downward force detector, or re-align the optical sensor.