Garage door won't open after an ice storm, with the power on
Dunwoody does not get an ice storm every winter, so most houses here have no routine for one. The oaks and the driveway glaze over, and the power holds or is back by breakfast. Then somebody presses the wall button and the garage door does not move.
Why won’t the garage door open the morning after an ice storm?
With the power on, the usual reason is ice at the bottom of the door. Rain ran under the bottom seal in the night and froze it to the slab, so the door is held down along its whole width. Less often, ice has packed into the foot of each track around the bottom brackets, or a spring let go in the cold. A door that came up crooked or froze partway open is a call for emergency garage door repair in Dunwoody.
If the house has no power at all, that is a different morning, and the page on a door that will not open with the power out covers it.
The seal goes first since the threshold is where a garage door collects its water. Everything that runs down the face of the door ends at that rubber edge, the same line where water stops at a garage door on a sloped lot, and in an ice storm that line freezes overnight.
Is it ice or a broken spring?
Look before you touch anything else. From inside the garage, with the door down, four things usually tell the two apart without anyone pulling on the door. Three you can see. The fourth is what the door did on that first press of the button.
- The torsion spring on the bar above the door. A clean gap in the coil means it broke.
- On a 1970s door with extension springs, the long springs beside each horizontal track. One hanging slack or down on the floor is broken.
- A line of ice along the bottom seal, or a lump of it at the foot of either track, means the door is frozen down.
- What happened on the press. The opener humming against a door that never moved can be ice or a spring. The door lifting an inch and the opener sending it back down is usually ice.
A gap in a spring settles it. The door stays down and the broken spring is the technician’s job, ice or no ice.
Skip the release-cord check on an iced door. With the bottom frozen to the slab, a door on good springs feels as heavy as one on a broken spring.
Can a frozen garage door wait for the thaw?
A door frozen shut with both springs whole can wait, and the house stays closed while it does. The glaze at the seal usually lets go on its own as the day warms up. Leaving it costs nothing, and a door that sat out the freeze closed is a daytime visit if it needs one at all.
What does not wait is a door that froze partway open, came up crooked, or cannot close over the opening. Those are the after-hours cases on the emergency page, and an after-hours visit adds $149 to $249 to the repair.
What happens if you keep pressing the garage door button?
The first press was the test. Every press after it has the opener pulling on a door that is glued at the bottom, and that is how a frozen morning turns into a repair. Press once, and if the door does not rise, stop and unplug the opener so nobody in the house tries again.
The seal is what usually pays for the extra tries, torn out of its retainer or ripped along the stretch that froze hardest. The opener’s arm meets the door at the top section, so that panel takes the pull while the bottom stays put, and it can bow or crack at its hinges. An opener with its force set low gives up and reverses. One set high keeps pulling.
Ice rarely lets go evenly, either. When one side breaks free first, the door rises on that side only, and a door that came up crooked in its tracks should not be run again. On a spring near the end of its life, a few hard pulls against the ice can be the last cycles it had.
Does an ice storm damage a garage door?
Often it does not, if the button was pressed once and the door was left to thaw. A seal that was pulled loose from the ice, or an old one that had already gone stiff, usually needs replacing, and the damage is easy to see along the bottom edge once the glaze is gone.
A seal pulled off frozen concrete tears where it was stuck hardest. An old one splits along its length instead. On a steel door the rubber slides into a metal retainer along the bottom edge, and a retainer the opener pulled against can bend or come away from the door in places. A new bottom seal with the side stops is $90 to $180, and the price page has what a new bottom seal costs here next to the rest of the repair list.
On the 1970s wood doors the water that froze under the seal also soaked into the bottom rail. At the same visit the pro looks over the hinges on the top section and sets the opener’s force back down if anyone turned it up to get the door past the ice.
When it is time to call: emergency repair in Dunwoody when the door came up crooked or will not close.