Automatic gate openers on swing and sliding gates: boards, batteries, photo eyes, remotes and keypads, from the crew that does your garage door.
Tell us what the door is doing. The estimate is free and you can say no.
Electric gate opener repair in Pittsburgh, PA: the motor that will not start, the board that has stopped listening, the battery that dies by evening, the photo eye that keeps the gate open, the keypad nobody can get to work. The operator is one machine with a few parts that fail in a known order, and we work through them in that order.
Linear arm and articulated arm swing operators, chain and rack sliders, underground units, solar kits. Most repairs are a board, a battery, a limit adjustment, a photo eye or a receiver, and those come on the first visit.
What breaks on a gate opener, most common first:
Solar gate openers are common on long drives in Pittsburgh where running power out to the gate was never done. They are honest machines with one weakness: the battery. Three to five years, fewer if the panel is shaded or dirty, and then the gate starts quitting by evening.
Hardwired units have their own failure, the low-voltage run from the house to the gate: buried too shallow, nicked by an edger, or joined with tape years ago. We find breaks with a meter before anything is dug.
Residential linear arms, articulated arms for set-back posts, underground units, chain sliders, rack-and-pinion sliders, dual-gate kits with a master and a slave, solar kits. If it moves a gate in Pittsburgh we have worked on its type.
Dual-gate setups have one extra failure, the sync between the two arms. When one leaf lags or the overlap is wrong, that is the board's timing, not a new arm.
Nine 'opens but will not close' calls in ten are a safety device doing its job for a bad reason. The photo eye has been knocked, the lens has a web across it, low sun is in the beam, a wire has been cut by a trimmer, or the edge sensor is holding water. The tenth is a board.
The operator is designed so that any doubt keeps the gate open. That is the right design, and repairing the device is the only right repair.
The same five steps on every operator, because the same faults hide behind the same symptoms.
The keypad at the post, the remote on the visor, the exit wand on the drive, the intercom at the gate: they are the parts you use every day and the parts water gets into. Most control repairs are a receiver, a keypad or a re-code, done on the first visit.
We test every control that is supposed to open the gate before we leave, including the one in the second car.
Boards, batteries, capacitors, limit switches, photo eyes, receivers and keypads are repairs. A worn gearbox on an operator that went out of production, a unit that was always too small, or one that has been under water are replacements. You will hear which at the visit, not on the phone.
Whatever goes in, the gate has to move freely by hand first. The operator is the last thing to blame for a gate that binds on its hinges.
repeated freeze-thaw cycles crack panels and seize rollers, and the operator lives outside through all of it. Summer heat is the enemy of batteries and boards; wet seasons find every failed seal; cold slows a tired motor and finishes a weak battery.
We see the same calls in the same months across Pittsburgh, and the truck is stocked for them: batteries and capacitors in summer, boards and photo eyes after storms, batteries again in the first cold.
Around Pittsburgh the usual suspects are LiftMaster, Mighty Mule and Ghost Controls on the residential drives, Nice Apollo and US Automatic on the solar ones, and DoorKing, Viking, FAAC and Eagle on the heavier slide gates. We carry parts for all of them and work on the rest.
Is there a light on the operator. Is the breaker on. Is the solar panel shaded or dirty. Is anything across the photo eyes. Does a second remote work. With the operator released, does the gate move by hand or does it drag. That is the whole checklist, and the answers make the visit shorter.
Leave the covers on and the safety devices connected. Everything else is the technician's.
Nine times in ten it is a photo eye or safety edge doing its job for a bad reason. We test each device in turn rather than guess.
Yes. Battery, charge controller, panel connections and the operator itself. Most solar calls are a battery past its life or a panel in shade.
All the common makes and most of the uncommon ones. The board, safety devices and controls follow the same rules on every brand.
No. A safety device that is holding the gate open is doing its job, and the repair is to fix it, which is nearly always quicker than the argument. We put bypassed devices back before anything else.
Most days. A gate stuck open is a security problem and the schedule keeps room for it.
Yes, across Pittsburgh and the towns around it. The technician tells you what has failed and what it takes to put right, and no is a complete answer.
Both. Operator repairs are most of the work, and the gate itself is handled by the same crew when it is the reason the operator failed.
Around Pittsburgh, one call gets you a two-hour slot and a heads-up call before the technician sets off. We don't buy leads and nobody on a phone judges a door they can't see.
Free estimate across Pittsburgh, PA and the towns around it.
Tell us what the gate is doing and you'll get a real arrival window. The visit and the estimate is free, anywhere in Allegheny County.
Prefer to talk it through? Call (412) 226-4206.
Tell us what the door is doing. The estimate is free and you can say no.