My wife and I moved into our house about 3 weeks ago. Nice upgrade, 840 square feet to 1660. Things have gone well, just a lot of upgrades to do, I’m about half way through the list.
At 2 am this morning, I had just climbed back in bed after a visit to the bathroom when I heard the garage door opener kick on. It ran for only a few seconds then shut off. It did this 4 or 5 more times in the next couple of minutes when I decided to get up and check things out. I opened the inside door to the garage and found the door open about 6 inches. A few seconds later it closed. The only thing different with the opener and the remotes was a new battery in my remote. Don’t know how that could make the door open and close but it’s all I can think of. I took the remote out of my truck, removed the battery and went back to bed. The door stayed closed till I got up at 3:30.
Before I left for work I put the battery back in my remote and used it to close the door. My wife, who was home all day, said the garage door was fine all day. I got home at my usual time today and within 10 minutes, the garage door opened fully. Neither of us touched a remote or the control button. I just spent half an hour searching for similar instance but really didn’t find anything the same. I checked the control button and door opener wiring, all is tight with nothing shorted. I took the battery out of my remote and things have been fine for the past half an hour.
I’m thinking it’s one of two things, a wonky remote or the house is haunted.
That used to happen at a house where I would pet sit.
I’d watch TV in the basement family room while the dogs ran around and played.
One time I came upstairs and the upstairs TV was on. Unnerved me a bit, then I found out the downstairs remote would turn on the upstairs TV too.
And the part about somebody in your neighborhood has the same frequency is true too. Had that happen at a different house, client was upset that I left her garage door open. I never opened the garage door, didn’t need to. After it happened a few more times she figured it out.
This is why you should keep the door locked from the garage to the house. I’ve heard stories of thieves who will ride around with garage remotes seeing if they can get any doors to open. Then they can rob the house. Don’t know if it’s true or not but better to be safe and keep the door locked.
I would suspect there is someone else fairly close operating on the same frequency. I would go in and change the pins in the opener and remote. These pins are set at the factory and often installers do not change them.
I’ve actually heard about criminals driving around neighborhoods pointing garage door openers at various garages looking for a hit. Dont know if thats just an urban legend or not.
Back in a day I was working on a tv story about garage door openers being used for burglaries. We had a remote for a gate at work which was effectively a garage door opener. On a lark I hit the button as I was driving down a suburban street.
Got 3 in six blocks. Stopped at each one, got interviews, and closed their garage doors.
Had the same problem as the OP – door would open or close on its own, at random times. I figured if a neighbor had the same code, the problem would occur frequently, but it did not.
Removed batteries from remotes, problem continued. Parenthetically, that was a pain in the ass! The problem occurred only infrequently, sometimes a week would pass. Still, in the interest of diagnosing the problem, I only put the battery in the remote when I actually wanted to open/close the door. Eventually I learned that it would happen even while the remote was powerless.
Moved on to the wall switch, which was in pretty poor shape. I thought it might be having a random short, so I replaced it with a new, simple “momentary switch”. Same result.
I was preparing to pull a new wire from the switch to the opener, that being the only hardware remaining. But I decided to speak with an actual professional. His explanation made sense! Lesson – get a pro answer before undertaking amateur investigations.
Oh, the answer? Mine was a really old opener that operated on a single frequency and a single code. Today’s openers use a “revolving code” system that changes codes every time you use them (invisibly to the operator). My old box was receiving occasional, random commands from neighbors’ remotes that were close enough to its code to cause it to operate. But it didn’t happen every time, because the neighbors’ remotes used a different random code every time.
The solution, unfortunately, was to buy a new opener with better discrimination in its signal reception. Problem solved! And the new one has a wifi dongle, so I get smartphone notices whenever the door opens or closes (so, wherever I am, I know if someone comes or goes in my garage) and I can even open or close it from my smartphone. Pretty cool! And no more random opening.
This used to happen to me with my old opener. One of my neighbors ended up on the same code/frequency. It took me a few days to figure it out, but one day I heard my door opening…went outside, and saw his was closing as he pulled away. I reset my opener and reprogrammed the remotes, and the problem went away.
I’ve since had a new opener installed anyway, for other reasons.
I had literally just replace the whole opener when it started opening and closing while I was standing there. After some troubleshooting I figured out that the wall switch had a snap-on plastic cover with the push button, and underneath was a circuit board with a corresponding switch. Turns out the manufacturing tolerances were off enough that when the cover was snapped on, it partially depressed the switch, turning it into a hair trigger. Then, small vibrations in the wall were enough to trigger the door. I keep meaning to file down the inside surface of the cover, but for now I just leave it off and push the switch on the circuit board by hand.
For reference, the reason I was replacing the opener was because it kept stopping and reversing when I’d go to close it, and no amount of adjusting the torque limits seemed to work. Finally I found some obscure web forum where some guy claimed that the capacitors in the safety beam modules go bad, and that turned out to be the solution. Except of course I didn’t find that out until after I’d already replaced the opener.
It’s the remote. This morning I put the battery back in it as my wife and I were getting ready to leave to run some errands. About 10 minutes later I heard the garage door opening and looked at the remote. Even though it hadn’t been touched since I put the battery in, the red light was on. I gave it a bump and the light went out. I later took the remote apart and found a switch on the circuit board with a defective return action. I can replace the remote, I can find new one’s on Ebay for about $10. My wife and I have decided to upgrade to a more modern opener instead.
AIUI:
The first generation garage door openers operated on acoustic (think ‘tuning fork’) signals (an apartment complex I used in the mid-90’s still used it). Any ‘clicker’ would operate any opener. It didn’t take long for thieves to figure this out.
Besides the garage door opener, we also have haunted lights outside the garage. When we moved in, the 2 lights on each side of the garage would not come on. Saturday morning I played breaker roulette in an attempt to kill power to a ceiling fan so I could replace it. Later my wife noticed the lights on the garage were on. The switch for the front porch light also controlled these lights. Last night, I noticed the porch light was on but the garage lights were off. The porch light switch was on.