Fix it
Garage door won't close
Nine times out of ten it is the safety sensors — the two small eyes about six inches off the floor at either side of the opening. If they cannot see each other the opener refuses to close, by design. It is usually a knock, a cobweb or low sun, and it is the one thing on this page you can genuinely fix yourself in five minutes.
Do this first
Look at the two sensors. One shows a steady light and the other should too. If either is off, flickering, or a different colour from usual, that is your answer.
Need it today?
MF Garage Doors
Door stuck, spring gone, car trapped — ring, do not fill in a form.
Call (863) 592-2143Repairs and service within 40 miles of Sebring — Avon Park, Lake Placid, Wauchula, Arcadia, Lake Wales, Bartow, Frostproof and Winter Haven.
New doors and replacements across central Florida — Tampa, Orlando, Lakeland, Winter Haven, Kissimmee, Clermont, and everywhere between.
4 of 5 are yours to fix
What it usually turns out to be
| Cause | How to tell | What happens next | Yours? |
|---|---|---|---|
| The safety sensors are misaligned or blocked | The door starts down then stops and goes back up, and the opener light flashes ten times. One sensor LED is out or flickering. | Wipe both lenses. Loosen the wing nut, sight them at each other until both LEDs are steady, tighten. Check nothing — a bin, a bike, a leaf — is in the beam. | Yes |
| Direct sunlight is washing out the receiver | It only happens in the late afternoon, or only in one season. | Shade the receiving sensor with a short piece of pipe or a sun shield. It is a known fault with every brand. | Yes |
| The close-travel limit is set wrong | The door closes fully, touches the floor and immediately opens again — sensors are fine and their lights are steady. | The opener thinks it hit something because it is still pushing after the door has landed. The travel-down setting needs backing off a turn on the opener head. | Yes |
| Something is binding in the track | It stops at the same point every time, and the door looks or sounds strained at that spot. | A bent track, a flat-spotted roller or a loose hinge. It needs looking at before the opener is forced against it again. | Call somebody |
| The lock is engaged | The door will not move at all and there is a solid clunk when it tries. | The manual slide lock on the inside of the door is thrown. Slide it back. Openers are broken this way regularly. | Yes |
What it costs
$95 – $180
For a sensor pair, fitted, if that is what it turns out to be. National guide range, checked September 2026 — get it in writing.
Other faults
The repair
What actually happens on the visit
- Checks the sensors before anything else — the lenses, the alignment, and whether both lights are steady rather than blinking. Most visits end here.
- Follows the sensor wire back to the opener. A staple through the cable when somebody tidied the garage is a common find, and it fails intermittently rather than outright.
- Runs the door by hand with the opener disconnected, watching for a point where it binds. A door that stops at the same place every time is being stopped by something, not by the sensors.
- Resets the down limit and the close force, then tests the safety reverse against a solid object and watches it come back up.
How long it takes. Twenty minutes if it is the sensors, which it usually is. An hour or two if the track or the limits need real work. This is one of the shorter visits.
Next time
Can you stop it happening again?
Mostly yes. Wipe the sensor lenses when you wash the car, and keep bikes and bins away from the two corners where they live. The other half — low winter sun straight into the receiver — is not preventable, and is why the wall button overrides them.