Garage door spring repair and replacement

The spring is what makes a two-hundred-pound door feel like it weighs twenty. It stores energy when the door comes down and gives it back when the door goes up. When it breaks, nothing about the door has changed except that you are now lifting all of it.

Protech does garage door spring repair on torsion and extension springs from three branches, in Ottawa, Mississauga and London, and each branch page covers what its own city does to a spring. Protech Garage Doors has been in business since 2009. It is a Garaga dealer, its technicians are certified, and the company is fully licensed.

Torsion or extension

A torsion spring sits on a shaft above the opening and winds up as the door closes. Cables run from drums at each end of that shaft down to the bottom brackets. Most doors fitted in the last twenty years are torsion, and it is the better system: the load is carried on the shaft, the door lifts level, and a failure drops the door rather than releasing a spring across the garage.

Extension springs stretch along the horizontal tracks on either side, one per side, usually on older or lighter doors. They should always have a containment cable threaded through them, because an extension spring that lets go without one leaves at speed.

Why springs are replaced in pairs

On a two-spring door the pair has been through the same number of cycles under the same load. If one has reached the end of its life the other is at the same point, and replacing only the broken one buys a second call within months. It also leaves the door unbalanced in the meantime, which the opener pays for. How many cycles a spring is rated for, and how fast a household uses them up, is worked through in the guide to how long garage door springs last.

Standard springs and longer-life springs

A spring is rated in cycles, one trip from closed to fully open and back to closed. Garaga's guide to garage door springs describes the standard lifting spring as a 10,000-cycle part that should last five to seven years, on the basis that the average household runs its door about 1,500 times a year. A household that runs it more can fit a longer-life spring: Garaga notes that some lifting springs are made with a 25,000-cycle life expectancy. The longer spring is sized to the same door, so the time to choose it is when the pair is replaced.

Rust takes cycles off any spring. Garaga traces some breaks to a spring that was not galvanized well enough, and warns that steel kept in constant humidity can corrode even when it was. Its advice is to have the springs checked and oiled twice a year, with petroleum-based motor oil.

Why this is not a homeowner job

A wound torsion spring on a double door holds enough energy to break an arm. Winding it takes the correct bars, and the bars have to be the correct diameter for the cones, because a screwdriver in a winding cone is how people get hurt. Beyond the winding itself, three things have to match the specific door: the wire size and length of the spring, the drum size, and the cable length. Get the pairing wrong and the door either hangs at the top or drags at the bottom.

What a snapped spring does to the opener

An opener asked to lift an unbalanced door is doing work it was never sized for. Run it a few times against a broken spring and you strip the gear kit, so a spring call becomes a spring call plus an opener repair. If you hear the bang, do not press the button again.

A broken spring can also leave a car shut in. Do not start it and let it run while you wait: Health Canada's carbon monoxide advice is never to idle a vehicle in the garage, even with the garage door open, and to keep the door between the house and the garage closed.

What decides the cost of a spring repair

Protech publishes no spring price, because the part is chosen for the door it lifts. The first questions are which kind the door carries, torsion or extension, and whether there is one spring or two. Then comes the weight: an insulated three-layer door, or anything added to a door since its last pair went on, changes the spring it needs. Cables and drums that wore alongside the old spring add to the job, and a longer-life spring is a different part from a standard one. A quote that names the wire size and length of the new spring tells you somebody measured.

Two checks before the technician leaves

Ask to see the balance. With the door fully closed, pull the release, lift the door by hand to waist height and let go: on springs wound for that door it lifts without a fight and stays about where it was left. A door that drops or creeps upward was wound for a different weight.

Then ask to see the safety reversal. Chamberlain's instructions say the reversal system must be tested after any adjustment, and that the closing door must reverse when it meets an object 1-1/2 inches (3.8 cm) high, or a 2x4 laid flat, on the floor. Winding new springs changes how the door travels, which is reason enough to run that test before the van leaves.