With the coming cold months, comes stormy weather. Stormy, cold days are perfect for cuddling up at home with hot coco and a good book or movie. In a perfect world we would be able to burrow in all winter long with friends and family, drinking hot toddys and wearing only sweatpants and hand knit sweaters… What a beautiful dream. Unfortunately for us that is all it is. A dream and we have to go outside to work, visit friends, and you know, be a member of society (que eyeroll here).
One thing that frustratingly comes with stormy weather is the occasional power outage. Power outages are frustrating for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest for us is that when the power goes out, our garage door openers don’t work anymore! As we have recently established, must leave our houses even when it’s cold, dark, and stormy. Read on farther for instructions on how to override your garage door opener so that you can still live your life! Power outages or not.
The first step is to get a step stool because you are going to need to unhook the opener from the garage door J arm.
Once you have your ladder simply place it underneath the rope that hangs from the J arm. These ropes most often have a red handle on them so that you can easily grab them. If you aren’t as short as I am you might not even need a step stool!
Grab on to the handle and simply pull down gently. You
should hear a click, telling you that the trolley is detached from the opener.
This makes it so that if you were to run the opener (even if there was power)
it wouldn’t be attached to the trolley, that runs along the opener rail. If
it’s not connected, it can’t pick the door up or put it down.
Luckily for you disconnecting the trolley with that rope (which by the way is
called the emergency release) does not take the trolley off the rail. It only
makes it so you can move the door up and down freely without any resistance
from the opener.
When you are ready to reconnect the opener to your door, simply get back on your step stool and pull the cord forward, with a slight upward motion. You will hear another click as the trolley re-enagages to the rail. After you’re done, make sure to run the door up and down with the opener power to make sure that it is connected correctly.