We had a storm last night while I was at karate class. When I got home, my garage door opener didn’t work. I suspected the remote control which is sometimes flakey, and will lose its sync withe opener on rare occasions for no reason. So I got up by the door with it, still didn’t work. Then I thought maybe we had a power failure. But the meter was stilll running. So I came in the front door, and went to go into the garage. The utility room light didn’t work. So I got a flash light and checked the breaker box. Sure enough I found a breaker that was tripped. I reset it. Now the utility room light worked. Then I used the button in the garage, but the door still wouldn’t open. I opened my wife’s door, which worked fine. Just not mine.
I started examining the garage door opener for a reset switch, or a fuse or something, but couldn’t find one. I got out the manual, but it didn’t mention a breaker of fuse.
I plugged a utility light into the outlet that the garage door opener plugged into, and it worked. So there was power. Then I noticed some black soot on the transluscent light cover.
I got a wrench and removed the cover from the garage door opener unit. The control board (sequencer) and a big char mark on it. It was fried.
The garage door opener I have is a Genie GCG350L. I bought it at Home Depot about 6 years ago when wwe bought our house. I installed it myself. I didn’t want to buy a whole new unit if just the board was fried.
I did some searching, and found a new board on eBay for $50, plus $10 shipping. That was the cheapest I found. The unit I bought is a 20380S. It has six terminals. The board I have in my opener has three terminals which is the 20380R. But the six terminal 20380S is supposed to work in my opener. I just need to knock out some tabs.
Then next day I found one of the little Safe-T-Beam sensors was open, and apart. I found a small char mark on the sensor board. So it looked like it might be fried too, or at least a good chance of it.
I bought some new Safe-T-Beam sensors at Home Depot for $30. I installed those tonight which only took a few minutes since I just had to pull the old ones off, and hook up the new ones. The brackets were the same.
Geez…maybe I should have bought a whole new garage door opener.
What it looks like is the power spike came in through the AC house power. When into the garage door opener, fried it, went through the sensor wire, and fried the sensor, and fried it. There was a small char mark on the wire, and wall. So I think the electricy jumped to the wall. On the other side of the wall (the outside of the house), I found mortar knocked from between a couple cinder blocks. I found pieces of mortar 8 feet away. I think the power spike or lightning blew the mortar out. Pretty wild!
The new board should come Saturday. I also want to replace the garage doo springs.
