VIDEO: How to Open Your Garage Door Manually

by Matt Schmitz

A man wearing black manually opens the garage door of a residential family home, garage, garage door, door, family home, residential home, home

When your garage-door opener fails to open the garage door, it’s like: “C’mon, man, you had one job to do!”

Be it because your power went out or there’s some other snafu preventing your garage door from raising automatically, this frustrating malfunction probably won’t happen at a convenient moment. More likely than not, it’ll be when your car’s trapped inside and you’re running behind.

You’re gonna need to do more than say “open sesame!” — but don’t worry, opening your garage door manually is almost as easy as saying the magic words. Here’s how:

First, disconnect the power for safety. You don’t want the electricity coming back on suddenly while you’re in the middle of doing this.
Next, pull down on the emergency release handle to disconnect the door from the trolley, which will enable you to operate it manually.
Now you should be able to pull the door straight up from the bottom, using your hands.
Be sure to pull it all the way up into the open position and ensure that it stops moving before taking your hand off it, as it could bounce back down and fall on someone.
Once you’ve pulled your car out a safe clearance distance from the garage door, park it while you go back inside, pull the door carefully back down into the closed position and lock it using the manual locking mechanism, then head back out to your car through the house.

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Once you’ve returned home — hopefully to restored power — you’ll want to re-engage the trolley so you can resume using your automatic garage door. Follow these steps to do so:

Disengage the manual locking mechanism you secured the door with last time you left the house.
Hit the button on your control panel or remote and wait for the trolley to run back to the starting position.
Pull the handle again, this time into the engage position.
Then press the garage door opener button again and let the trolley click into place with the door.

Three safety tips to keep in mind:

Never pull the emergency release when the door is open; the weight of the door could bring it down.
Similarly, never leave your garage door open when it’s no longer connected to the automatic opener. The door could easily slam shut, injuring people or damaging vehicles.
If your door is very difficult to move, there might be another issue, like a damaged torsion spring, in need of a repair (in which case, call a pro), or maybe you’re just a bit of a wuss, in need of a gym (in which case … call a bro).

Watch the video below for a full demonstration:

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