That Finicky Garage Door Remote: Why It Has a Mind of Its Own

Posted: Sep 26, 2012
Author: Doors by Nalley of Lake Norman, Inc.

Yes, the garage door remote control can be a frustrating little piece of equipment. We often find ourselves pressing three, four, five times in order to make the garage door open. We find as time passes, the range of the remote shortens. And people's garage doors, every once in a while, are even known to open “by themselves.” How could a garage door open without the use of the remote? Did someone else's remote open the door? Keep reading for the answer to these and other questions.

A garage door remote functioning poorly or not at all can be caused by a few things. First of all, try replacing the batteries. Low battery power can decrease the range of the remote (optimally a few car lengths), or cause it not to function at all. If the battery is not the problem, it's possible that you will have to reprogram the remote. Instructions on how to do this can be found in the garage door opener owner's manual.

If neither of these options improves functioning, it is possible that your garage door opener is dead. However, it's not such a big problem: you can always purchase a replacement.

Now, what if your garage door is behaving seemingly independently of the garage door opener? Early garage door openers were all built to communicate on very similar frequencies; thus, one remote could easily open garage doors other than its own correspondent. Obviously, with the widening use of garage doors, this technology had to be improved.

Garage door remotes today use complex, encoded frequencies for communication, in order to protect your door from being opened by another signal, intentionally or otherwise. The chances of a neighbor's remote operating on the same frequency as yours is low, with each garage door remote having several thousand, if not million, possible combinations.

If your garage door is opening by itself, chances are much higher that there is a fault in the equipment. A garage door repairman or company can easily help.