The typical garage door does not get a lot of love. Most people are content to push the button on their wall or remote and hope it works. Often, the first maintenance a door gets occurs when it becomes obvious that the door is damaged. In order to keep your garage door working like it should, you need to protect your door from damage and know how to take care of small problems on your home own. 

Clutter Control

The front corners of a garage are a popular place to stash everything from yard tools to gas cans. While you can store some things in the corners of your garage, you need to be careful to make sure that you don't hit your garage door rails or obstruction sensors as you store things in your corner. The wind can whip trash bags, leaves, and other debris into the corners of your garage, so you should keep your garage door closed when you're not using your garage and clear out debris before it has a chance to build up and block your sensors. If your obstruction sensors won't let your door go down, clear away debris, then clean the lenses. Often this will be enough to get the sensors working like they should.

Bumper Bikes

Another danger to watch out for is running into your garage door rails. As children are trying to get bikes into or out of your garage, they can bump into the rails as they are trying to sneak around cars and other items you have stored in your garage. If your kids do run into you garage door rails, the rails can bend and then pinch the wheels as your garage door tries to go up and down. Even a small pinch can be enough to stop your door. To fix the problem, place a block of wood against your garage door rail, then pound on the block of wood with the hammer. The wood will distribute the force of the hammer strike over a greater area and prevent it from causing new damage. 

Avoiding damage is better than trying to make repairs once damage has occurred. Garage door components are not designed to stand up to rough abuse. Thus, even a small bump from throwing a shovel into the corner can be enough to damage an obstruction sensor and running into a garage-door rail can be enough to knock it out of alignment. A little prevention will go a long way. 

For further assistance, contact a local professional, such as one from Doors Unlimited.