You open up at six and the front entrance is already sliding open and shut with nobody standing there. Or the opposite happened. The door is dead, the line is building outside, and all you can think to do is prop it. Either way the questions are the same. Is this the sensor, or is it the whole machine? Is it safe to let people walk through today? And is somebody about to tell you the entrance needs replacing?
Short answer: almost every automatic door problem is one of three parts. The sensor that sees you coming, the motor that moves the door, or the controller that runs both. Here is how the common ones sort out:
- A door that opens with nobody in front of it has a bad sensor. The trade calls it ghosting, and the sensor gets replaced.
- A door that is completely dead is often a switch or a loose panel, not a failed part.
- A door that will not hold open for someone standing in the doorway has a presence sensor problem. Treat a door like that as a safety issue.
- A push button that does nothing is usually the operator motor or the button itself.
How I know: the safety rule book for automatic doors changed in 2017. Here is what it asks your door to do now. Every time before the door closes, the small computer inside it sends a test signal to each safety sensor. Then it waits for the sensor to answer. No answer means a broken sensor, and a door with a broken sensor is not allowed to move until somebody fixes it. Locksmith Ledger quotes the rule book on that last part: “if a fault is detected, the automatic operator cannot function until the fault is corrected.” So a door that looks dead is often a door with one bad sensor, and it will run again once that sensor is replaced. Our crews see all five problems, on automatic doors and on the rest of a building’s commercial doors.
By the end you will know what ghosting means, why a dead door is often just a switch, which part each symptom points at, what you can check yourself, and who inspects the door.
Key takeaways
- A door opening on its own has a failed sensor, and adjusting the sensor will not fix it.
- A bad safety sensor shuts the door down on purpose, because the safety rule book tells the door to.
- The push button and the operator motor are what fail on accessible entrances.
- You check the door daily. A certified inspector checks it yearly. Service sits in between.
Your door opens with nobody there
There is a name for a door that does this, and the name points at one part.
“It is called ghosting,” Yuval says. “When it starts to open randomly, the sensor is bad and you need to change to a new sensor.”
Yuval is one of our elite techs, and ghosting is what he explains most. Owners treat a ghosting door as a setting somebody nudged. It is not a setting. The sensor has stopped reading the space in front of the door, and the fix is a new one.
Rule out one thing first, because the check is free. Walk the outside of the door and look for something that moves nearby. A banner, a flag, a hanging sign, a display rack somebody rolled over last week. Move that thing away and watch the door for ten minutes. Still opening for nobody? Then it is the sensor, and every extra day runs the door toward its next repair.
The door is completely dead
Before anyone quotes you a motor, rule out three things. Two cost you nothing.
Start with the function switch near the door, marked automatic, open and closed. Stanley’s owner’s manual for its sliding doors is blunt about the closed setting. The doors shut, they stay shut, and the sensors are off. A door on that setting looks broken and is fine. Somebody bumped it, or whoever locked up left it there.
Next, the breakout panels. Here is what those are for. In an emergency, the whole panel swings outward on a hinge, so a crowd can push straight through instead of waiting for the door to slide. Once a panel has swung out, the door will not run again until somebody pushes that panel back into its frame. The same manual says that push can take 50 pounds of force. So a panel can sit almost closed and still be out.
Third, and this is the one nobody expects: a failed safety sensor. The door runs that test before every close, so one bad sensor shuts the whole entrance down. Nothing else is broken. The door refuses to run when running would not be safe.
The door keeps cycling open and closed
A door stuck in a loop is being told to open by something the sensor can see, over and over.
Ghosting is the random version. A steady loop is different. The presence sensor catches something, holds the door open, lets go, then catches the same thing again. Grit or a cracked lens will do it. So will a curled floor mat, or low sun hitting the sensor at the same hour each day. A tech watches the light on the sensor and can tell you which one it is.
Here is why a looping door is worth a call. Every cycle runs the belt, the carriers and the motor for nobody at all. A door looping all day for a curled mat is using up its own parts.
Someone stands in the doorway and the door still closes
Stop using that door and get it looked at the same day.
Two sensors work on an automatic door. The activation sensor sees you walk up and opens the door. The presence sensor watches the doorway itself and holds the door open while you stand there. When a door closes on somebody standing still, the presence sensor has failed. A person in a wheelchair, or somebody pushing a stroller, is exactly who moves slowly enough to get caught.
A door that closes on people and has not shut itself down is not running the sensor test described above.
The push button does nothing
You know the blue push pad by an accessible door. The law behind that pad is the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA. A door with one is its own machine, and it fails in its own way.
“When an ADA door stops working, it is either the motor or the push button, the push-to-open actuator people hit on the way in,” Yuval says. “Those are the two parts that take the wear.”
The button gets hit by an elbow, a knee, a wheelchair footplate and a delivery cart, hundreds of times a week. It is a cheap part doing a hard job, and the motor above the door is the other part that fails. Owners expect to hear the door needs reprogramming, and that is rarely the answer. This is most of the ADA door repair work we run.
What each symptom points at
| What you see | The part behind it | What usually happens |
|---|---|---|
| The door opens with nobody there | The activation sensor | The sensor gets replaced |
| The door does nothing at all | A switch, a breakout panel, or a sensor fault | Reset the switch, seat the panel, or repair the sensor |
| The door opens and closes in a loop | The presence sensor, or what it sees | Clean or replace the sensor, clear the space |
| The door closes on someone standing still | The presence sensor | The sensor gets replaced, same day |
| The push button does nothing | The button or the operator motor | The failed part gets replaced |
| The door drags, grinds or stops partway | The carriers, belt or motor | The worn part gets replaced |
The last column is the part that matters most. “If it is parts, it is replaced,” Yuval says. “If it is a door, we repair it, and most of the time you do not need to change it.”
What you can safely check before you call
Four checks, and a manager can do all of them in a couple of minutes.
- Look at the function switch. Put it back on automatic if somebody moved it, then watch one full cycle.
- Push each breakout panel back in until it seats. Lean into it. A panel that is nearly closed still stops the door from running.
- Look at the sensor above the door. Cobwebs, a film of dust, a cracked lens or a wasp nest all count as something to report.
- Clear the space the door watches. Move the display, the banner or the curled mat, then give the door ten minutes.
Leave the speed screws, the hold-open timer and the sensor aiming alone. Those settings are what keep the door from hitting somebody. If none of the four checks changes anything, the next step is a tech.
Who is supposed to check this door, and how often
Three people, three schedules.
The companies that build automatic doors run a group called the American Association of Automatic Door Manufacturers. Most people just say AAADM. The group asks you to run a short safety check every day. It also asks for one check a year by an inspector the group has trained. Service sits between those two, and service is the one owners skip. Yuval keeps it short: “We have customers that go twice a year to do a maintenance.” Those are not the ones calling on a Friday.
I am Gal Cohen, field area manager at JDM Sliding Doors. We have worked on automatic and commercial entrances since 2012, across six states. Our guide to automatic door maintenance covers what a service visit includes.
Frequently asked questions
The power went out and now the door opens slowly. Is it broken?
Probably not. Stanley’s manual describes a re-tuning cycle after a reset. The door opens and closes very slowly in a search mode while the door works out its own travel again. Let it finish without walking through it if you can. A door still crawling an hour later is a different problem.
Can I leave the door on hold open until someone comes?
For a day, with somebody watching the door, yes. Holding it open keeps people out of the path of a door nobody trusts. It also leaves the building open to weather and to anyone who walks in, so treat it as a stopgap.
Does rain or a windy day set a door off on its own?
It can. Wet ground throws reflections, and wind moves whatever hangs near the door. That is why the first move on a ghosting door is clearing the space and watching. A door that only acts up in bad weather is still telling you the sensor is reading the space badly.
Is the annual inspection the landlord’s job or mine?
Whatever the lease says. Read that part before the check is due, not after somebody gets hurt, and ask for the record either way. The record should name who checked the door and when.
Get the door looked at before it closes your entrance
A ghosting sensor and a dead push button end the same way, with a door nobody can use during business hours. If your door is doing any of the five things above, our crews handle automatic door repair and storefront entrances in every market we cover. Call JDM Sliding Doors and we will get a tech out to it.
