Electric garage door openers are another convenience brought to you by technology. You can control a garage door opener either by the switches on the garage wall or with the provided remote.
When it comes to choosing a garage door opener, Chamberlain is simply the best. Bad weather may result in an unexpected power cut which makes your garage door opener useless.
Do you want to remain stuck outside in the storm? Naaaah! In such circumstances, knowing how to manually open your garage door will help you.
Preparing Your Door For Manual Operation
You should prepare your door to be opened manually. To do so, you should disconnect the power cord of the automatic garage door opener.
Look for the emergency rope at the door and pull it back. This emergency rope can be identified by its red-colored handle. Secure it in its pulled place to avoid door crashes. This rope pulling leads to the door crash when done on an opened door. Do this with the emergency rope only if the door is closed.
If your garage door has an emergency release kit, you just have to insert the key into the lock from the outside. No cords, no stress.
Opening the Door
Reach for the bottom of the door and start lifting. If the door is too heavy, do not proceed as there are high chances for you to give it up in between which can hurt you. Get someone to help you.
Don’t leave the door until it stays in place. If the door does not seem to be staying in place, gently put it down and restart lifting. After one or two tries, you will be able to put it in place.
While it stays there, get into the garage and bring your vehicle out (or park it in).
Closing It Back
After you’re done, come out and pull the door all the way down to the floor. As your door is now not under automatic operation, you should not overlook manually locking it. Slide the lock bar to lock the door of your garage and call it done.
Reconnecting The Door To The Electric Opener
When the power is back, connect your garage door to the automatic opener.
Remove the slide bar and ensure that the door is shut off completely. Now plug in the automatic door opener. This reconnection will take a couple of minutes and you will hear a ‘click’ sound after it is successful.
Run a check of opening and closing actions and it should be back on track. In case, it isn’t, you may have to reach out to a technician to fix it.
Safety Measures
- Don’t stand in the way of an opened door. Clear anything that is in the way too. Garage doors are super heavy and when they crash on anyone or anything, severe injuries are obvious.
- Garage doors can be seriously heavy and be a burden to your back. In such cases, contact an emergency door opening service near you.
- Do not forget to unplug the power cord of your opener. If you neglect this tip, thinking there would be no harm as there is already a power cut, note that odds are not always in our favor. The power can come back when you are working with it giving you an unwanted touch of electrical shock.
- The emergency cord should not be touched when the door is open. Period.
Bonus Tips
- Remember to check your garage door opener comes with an Emergency Release Kit at the time of installation. Although every door opener is designed that way, there is no harm in paying attention to it. An emergency release kit will allow you to open the garage door manually through the lock-and-key mechanism.
- Choose a garage door opener with battery backup keeping power out situations in mind. You can also ask an electrician to connect it to an inverter battery.Unless it is an emergency, your door is better off with the comfort of an electric opener as manual opening has high chances to damage the door.
