Garage Door opener help

[paul253]

Does anyone know anything about garage door openers?

 

I went to open my garage last night with the keypad and it didn't work. I tried using my spare opener and that didn't work either. Then I went inside the garage and the button mounted on the wall didn't work either. I thought maybe a battery in the main unit was out, but i looked and the entire thing was plugged in. It wouldn't make sense to me to have a battery AND be plugged in, so I guess I'm working under the assumption it doesn't have a battery. The interesting thing is that the light in the garage doesn't work either, but the floodlights facing my driveway, where the switch is on the same circuit (i think) as the garage light, those work fine. I checked and it doesn't look I blew a circuit or anything. The only thing left I am going to try is to run an extension cord with the garage door opener into my kitchen or something but it was pooring rain today so I havent tried that yet.

 

Any ideas?

[temke]

does the opener button in the garage have a "lock" button on it? maybe you accidentally hit the lock button, which stops the opener from working.

 

not that i ever did that with my opener http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

[paul253]

The more I look at it the more I think it has to be electrical. My garage isnt getting any electricity. I took a nightlight that I had plugged into the kitchen and brought it outside and plugged it into all the outlets, including the one that the opener was hooked up to. It didnt work in any of them. What a pain in the you know what. I don't think I blew a circuit, so I cant imagine what else it could be.

 

Stupid electricity.

[whizkid]

I don't think I blew a circuit

 

You haven't checked to make sure? Once you get this worked, out you should map out all your circuits for future reference.

[paul253]

I have checked, and all the circuits are on. The one that goes to the garage is not marked though. Is it possible the entire circuit got fried someone?

[1992casey]

Is your garage GFCI (aka GFI) protected? These are the outlets with the two buttons that you're supposed to test now and then. Maybe you popped one of those. To check, locate the outlets and push the button to reset.

 

Note that one GFI outlet may "control" several other outlets, and they're not always in the same room. Also, it's possible that a GFI could be located directly on the circuit breaker panel.

[TheCrew07]

It's doubtful you fried the entire circuit, you have a newer house with breakers in an electrical panel correct? Or are you in an older home that has fuses? Or fuses replaced by pennies (not that my parents ever did such a thing).

 

Sometimes when the breaker gets tripped it sits just off center so that it looks like it's on, I used to have this problem quite a bit in one of my buildings at work before my servers had 20 amp dedicated circuits run to them. Try flipping the breaker all the way to off, let it sit for 5 seconds or so, then flip it back to on and see if that does the trick. It's unlikely, but you're sure there's no sub-panel in the garage that has a breaker tripped?

[Barbs4339]

I too am guessing the GFI needs to be reset. I had an outlet in my spare bathroom that stopped working and I was baffled as to why. A couple weeks later I pressed the red reset button on the outlet in my other bathroom across the house and that solved the problem.

[JimH5]

I'm with the GFI crowd.

 

We had a house in NJ that had a GFI outdoor outlet right underneath a leaky gutter. That thing tripped all the time.

[olliegjw]

Did a light switch just get flipped off that controls the opener and outlet?

[paul253]

I appreciate all the suggestions. Here's the final verdict.

 

I am putting a bathroom into my basement, and the initial work has already been done. An electrician came in to do some stuff. I called in another electrician today to figure out why my garage wasn't getting any electricity. He looked at a box in the garage that was connected to the outlets, and didn't find anything. So we went to the basement to look at the electrical box. He opened it, and took the panel off, and within 2 seconds he said "who was working on your box?" I told him about the other electrician for the bathroom. This guy does something, about 5 seconds later says "go try it", and sure as shoot it works. Turns out the other electrician when he was doing whatever it was that he was doing, somehow disconnected the wire that runs into the breaker. So I'm all here wondering what the heck is wrong with my garage door opener, and turns out an electrician, who should certainly know better, accidentally disconnected a wire. I'm lucky it was the one in the garage, not one in like the kitchen or living room. So now I'm stuck with a service call bill for this new electrician, who I actually have used before and is a really good electrician. Obviously he has to get paid for coming. Needless to say, my bathroom contractor is going to be hearing about this.