Door stuck open with snow blowing in, a car trapped behind a dead door, or an opening you cannot secure overnight? Those are the calls we move to the front of the day.
A door stuck open in January is not an inconvenience, it is an open wall on your house. Snow drifts in, the slab freezes, anything stored in there is exposed, and if the garage is attached you are heating the outdoors through a shared wall. Add a forecast of single digit overnight temperatures and it stops being something that can wait until Tuesday.
The calls we prioritise are a door stuck open, a car trapped inside when someone needs to get to work, a door that will not latch or close and leaves the house unsecured, and a door hanging visibly crooked or partly off its track where the next thing that happens could be it coming down.
A door that closes but squeaks, or an opener remote that has stopped working, is a normal service call. We would rather book that properly than charge you emergency rates for something that is genuinely fine until tomorrow, and we will tell you which one you have when you describe it on the phone.
Sometimes the full repair needs a part that is not on the van, particularly on an older door or an unusual size. That does not mean you are left with an open garage overnight.
The first job on an emergency call is always to get the opening closed and secured, even if the permanent fix is booked for the next working day. A door that can be safely brought down and locked manually gets brought down and locked. What we will not do is force a door closed in a way that damages it further or leaves it liable to drop, because a garage door that falls is genuinely dangerous.
If the door is stuck open and the weather is coming in, pull the red release cord and try lowering it by hand. If it comes down under control, leave it down and do not reconnect the opener.
If it will not come down, or it feels like it wants to drop rather than lower, stop and leave it. A door with a broken spring or a failed cable can come down far faster than you can get out of the way.
Keep children and pets out of the garage, move the car out of the opening if it is safe to do so, and do not keep cycling the opener hoping it catches. In the great majority of emergency calls we attend, some part of the damage happened after the original fault, while somebody was trying to make it work.
There is a call-out difference outside normal hours, and you will be told what it is on the phone before anyone is dispatched. No surprises when the technician arrives.
Pull the red emergency release cord and try to lower the door by hand. If it lowers under control, leave it down and call. If it resists, or feels like it wants to fall rather than lower, stop and wait for us. A door with a broken spring can come down very fast.
In most cases yes, and often before the full repair is finished. Tell us on the phone that a car is trapped, because it changes where the job sits in the day.
No. Securing the opening is the first job on any emergency call, even when the permanent repair has to be booked for the next working day.
Related: Spring Repair · Off-Track Repair · Frozen & Stuck Doors
Evening and weekend emergency service across Grand Rapids and West Michigan.
