iafter traveling for a few days, i realized ididn’t have my house key, so my son sorta deactivated the automatic garage so all i needed to do was turn the exterior knob outside the garage door and lift up manually, but now i don’t know how to reactivate it, my son is sitting in an airplane now back to arizona.
is there a button i need to push? i notice that the exterior knob/bar has an interior kind of knob that you can turn in three directions, i think i’ve tried all three but it doesnt lift up, but i can hear the motor turning on.
There should be a switch/catch on the motor that will change it from manual to motorized operation. Worse case, google the name and model and see if you can find instructions online.
Is the chain that’s moving from the motor catching the metal rod attached to the door? If not, you have to lift the door all the way up until it clicks into the drive.
IMPORTANT FIRST POINT: Do not operate the opener again until you ensure that you have not manually locked the garage door. From the inside of the garage, you should be able to see if the handle you turned has pushed one or two metal rods through holes in the metal tracks (that the door’s wheels run in). If you run the opener while the door is locked you’ll burn up its motor because the door can’t move.
Disclaimer: I am not a garage door mechanic, although I’ve installed two such openers.
Now to your question: Often, the thing that slides up and down the center chain rail has a catch in it that engages/disengages it to/from the chain. It’s usually disengaged by pulling down on the rope that hangs from it. My guess is that yours has had the rope pulled down. The rope often attaches to an L-shaped piece of metal that needs to be pivoted back up in order to re-engage it to the chain. You often can’t use the rope to do this - you sometimes have to push it back up by hand.
Once you’ve done this, then operate the garage door opener. If this was the issue it should “catch” the thing you just fooled with, as fisha notes.
there’s a pull string that hangs down from the top and i was trying to look around that area and pulled it and i heard it click, so i went to push the button and it works now!
thanks for all your help!
I am assuming your son decoupled the door from the latch on the chain that the motor runs back and forth to raise and lower the door.
If the door is closed but mechanically disconnected from the drive chain (you hear the motor running but the door doesn’t move) then usually all that’s necessary is to run the motor. The latch will run along the track until it goes all the way to the “closed” position, meets up with the rod on the door, they’ll snap together, and the next time you push the button the motor will bring the door back up.
OTOH, if the door is open, and you push the button, the latch should catch the door and then close it.
On preview, you would be well advised to observe the red text above.
It sounds like what the kid did was to pull the cord which detaches the drive from the carrier mechanism, which is a little metal piece on the end of the lift arm. If so, the motor will run and the drive will hum but the door will not lift.
Additionally, when the automatic lifter is being used, the latch mechanism must be held in a permanently open position. If the drive is detached from the lift mechanism, it’s possible he also returned the latch mechanism to a “latchable” setting. This mechanism on a typical door is simply a catch attached by a wire to the handle; when the handle turns the catch releases or catches. It will be obvious if you look at it how it works.
OK…first you need to secure the regular latch in the open position. If there is not a way to do this with the handle, you’ll need to figure out how to pull the wires so that the latch does not catch. Otherwise the lifter will be trying to lift the door against the closed latches. Make sense?
Next, with the door in the closed position look up and find a little lever with a cord hanging from it. Push the lever back up until you feel it click. That little click is the mechanism that attaches the lift arm back onto the drive, so that when the drive turns the door will get pulled up and down.
Hope this helps. It’s always hard to do by text what a quick inspection could do in 30 secs.