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Every automatic garage door is built to be opened without power. The motor only ever pushes and pulls; the springs do the lifting. So when the power is out or the opener has died, you release the motor's grip on the door and the springs take over. The steps differ by door type and by which side of the door you are standing on, so find your situation below.
Read this before you pull anything
Release the door only when it is fully closed, or fully open and blocked from falling. A door released halfway with a weak or broken spring can drop with its full weight. If the door is already stuck partly open, treat it as a spring or cable fault and call for help rather than releasing it.
Sectional doors: the red cord
A sectional door's opener drives a trolley along a rail above the door. Hanging from that trolley is a red cord with a handle, and that is the garage door manual release. With the door closed and the opener unplugged, pull the cord straight down and slightly toward the motor until you feel or hear the trolley click free. The door is now disconnected from the motor and can be lifted by the bottom edge or the handle.
A balanced door lifts with one hand and stays wherever you leave it. If you need both arms and a grunt, or it drifts down when you let go, the springs are undersized or failing. Do not keep using the door by hand in that state; it is the setup that leads to crushed fingers and doors dropping onto bonnets. Our springs guide explains what balance should feel like.
Reconnecting a sectional door
Most openers reconnect automatically: pull the cord again to reset the latch, plug the opener back in, and press the wall button. The trolley travels along the rail until it clicks into the door arm. On some models you need to pull the cord toward the door rather than the motor to reset it; the manual for your opener shows which. Nothing needs to be forced.
Roller doors: the release on the motor
A roller door opener sits at one end of the drum, above the door. Its manual release is on the motor itself: a lever, a knob or a short cord, depending on the brand. Moving it disengages the drive from the axle so the curtain can be rolled up by hand. Older Gliderol and Steel-Line units often use a lever on the motor body; B&D and ATA roller openers commonly use a cord or a quick-release on the motor. The manual for your model is the authority on which way it moves.
With the drive released, lift the curtain evenly from the bottom rail with both hands, keeping it level so it does not bind in the guides. A roller door that needs real effort, or that races up on its own once started, has a spring tension problem inside the drum. That is not something to adjust yourself, for the reasons set out in our roller door spring tension guide.
Tilt doors
Tilt doors use the same trolley-and-rail opener as sectional doors, so the red cord method applies. The difference is the arc: a tilt door swings out at the bottom as it lifts, so stand clear of the driveway side and keep cars back a metre before releasing it. Tilt doors are also the type most likely to be counterweighted rather than sprung; a counterweight door still balances the same way, and the same heaviness rule applies.
Opening manually from outside
If the garage has no other entrance, you need an external release. Many sectional doors have a small key cylinder near the top of the door; turning the key pulls a cable connected to the trolley release, after which the door lifts by hand. Roller doors sometimes have a key lock at the centre of the bottom rail, which unlocks the curtain but does not disengage the motor. If neither is fitted, there is no safe way in from outside without damaging the door, and a technician with the right release tools is the sensible call.
Owners who lose power often, or who have a garage with no internal door, should have an external release fitted before they need it. A battery backup on the opener removes the problem for outages altogether.
Getting through a power cut
- Release the door, lift it, and drive out. Then lower it by hand and lock it with the slide bolt or manual lock; our manual locking guide covers each door type.
- Leave the opener released until power returns. Do not reconnect the motor and then try to lift the door by hand; you will be fighting the drive.
- When power is back, reconnect the trolley or drive, then run the door once from the wall button and watch it complete a full open and close before trusting the remote.
- If the door will not reconnect or the opener stays silent afterwards, our reset guide walks through the recovery steps.
When to call a technician
Call rather than pull the release if the door is stuck partly open, if you can see a gap in the torsion spring or a loose cable, if the door is visibly crooked in its tracks, or if it takes two people to lift. These are the faults that injure people who try to muscle through them. Elite attends garage door repairs across Perth 24/7 with no call-out fee, and an after-hours visit adds a flat $500 to the repair price, incl. GST.
If the door is stuck and blocking the car you need for work, that is exactly what our emergency garage door repairs service exists for.