Align Garage Door Sensors

Garage door sensors protect your family, possessions and pets by not allowing the heavy garage door to close if there is anything in the glide path. They do this by using an electric eye sensor that crosses the doorway. If the sensor doesn't receive the beam emitted by its opposite number, the door won't close. This seems like a clever device until the components come out of alignment -- meaning the door won't close at all. Fortunately, it's not difficult to realign the sensors and put things back into working order.

Steps

  1. Turn off the power to your sensors by tripping the fuse for your garage. You'll find this in your home's breaker box.
    • You won't actually be working with the electrical wiring, but it's always best to be safe when working with electricity.
  2. Loosen the screws that mount each of your garage door sensors. Don't take them all the way out. Just loosen them enough so that the mounting brackets can slide up and down, but won't do so unless you intentionally move them.
  3. Slide each garage door sensor downward so it is as low as possible without unscrewing the mounting brackets.
  4. Tie a string to one sensor so that, if pulled across the garage doorway, it will run across the center of the sensor.
  5. Run the string across the garage doorway and tie to the opposite sensor. Position the knot so the string runs across the center of that sensor, too.
  6. Lay a level so the bottom runs along the string. Check that the line of the string is level.
    • If the line of the string isn't level, adjust 1 or both garage door sensors by sliding the mounting bracket upward. Continue until the sensors are once again level.
  7. Tighten the screws to secure the garage door sensors in their new position.
  8. Confirm that the string is level before finishing. The sensors may have come out of alignment when you tightened the screws.
  9. Finish by removing the string and turning the power to your garage back on.



Tips

  • If you have a laser level, you can use it instead of a string to align your garage door. In this case, you will set up the level aligned with one sensor, then adjust the opposite sensor until the beam of your laser level is hitting the sensor.
  • Proper height for a garage door sensor is 4 to 6 inches (10.2 to 15.2 cm). Higher than that can miss many low-lying objects, including pets. Lower is easy to stand above with a foot on either side. If your garage door sensors are outside of this range, remove them entirely from the garage door frame and install, leveled, inside the safe zone.

Things You'll Need

  • Screwdriver or power screwdriver
  • String, {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} long
  • Level

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Sources and Citations

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