Garage door repair, installation and openers in Ottawa

Tell us what the door is doing when you call, rather than which part you think has gone. Four complaints are worth telling apart before the van arrives. Every other symptom has its own entry under garage door problems in Ottawa.

The garage door won't open

Listen first. If the motor runs and the door stays down, suspect a spring. Garaga, the Quebec door maker, calls the springs a counterweight: they are why one hand can raise a 150-pound door. With the spring broken, the opener is trying to lift the whole weight by itself. No sound and no light means the fault is upstream of the door, in the outlet, the breaker, the wall button or the remote. Garage door spring repair in Ottawa covers the first case.

The garage door reverses before it closes

That is a safety system working. Garaga notes that since 1993, every opener made in Canada and the US has to carry two. One is a pair of photo eyes about six inches off the floor, one on each side of the door. The other is the motor itself, which reverses when the descending door meets resistance. A blinking or dark light on an eye means the beam is broken, by an eye knocked out of line or by something sitting in its path. Steady lights point at resistance instead, and in January that can be the bottom seal catching on a ridge of ice at the threshold. Garage door sensor repair in Ottawa covers the eyes and the wire run behind them.

The garage door stops halfway

A door that stops partway is fighting its own hardware, or it is heavier than the opener will lift. Garaga names the hardware faults that lead there: rollers worn past their life, and horizontal tracks pulled out of parallel when the bolts on their brackets work loose, which lets a roller climb out. If the door stops tilted, one side lower than the other, suspect a lift cable. Garaga describes a broken cable leaving one side fully closed and the other still up.

Leave the red release cord alone on a door stuck partway. Chamberlain's instructions say to use the emergency release only when the door is fully closed, because a door with weak or broken springs can fall rapidly and without warning. Garage door off track in Ottawa covers a roller out of its track.

The garage door slams shut

A door that drops the last foot, or lands hard, has springs that are no longer carrying it. Chamberlain lists a door that slams shut among the signs to stop and call a professional, and the weight is why: Garaga gives 225 to 400 lb (100 to 185 kg) for a 16-foot double door. Stop using the opener and keep people and cars out from under the door. The spring lifespan guide explains why a spring's life is counted in cycles.

For one failed part, repair is cheaper, and a sound door on a new part runs the way it did. Springs, cables, rollers, hinges, the photo eyes and an opener gear kit are all parts, and the truck carries them. A new door is the cheaper answer when the door itself has failed: steel rusted through along the bottom section, or damage across more than one section.

Garaga's account of a car hitting a door shows where that line falls. The car does not have to be moving fast, perhaps 5 to 8 km/h, and the door usually takes damage to its two lower sections and to the rest of the system with them. It often ends up hanging from its lift cables with rollers out of the track.

The guide on whether to repair or replace your garage door goes through each sign in detail, and garage door replacement in Ottawa covers what a new door involves here.

We repair and replace LiftMaster, Chamberlain and Genie openers: chain drive, belt drive and screw drive. When the motor runs but the door does not move, the fault is usually a stripped gear kit, which is a repair rather than a new unit. An opener that stalls, runs loud, or stops partway even after a tune-up has reached the end of its life and gets replaced. A heavy steel, wooden or carriage-style door gets a 3/4 horsepower opener; a lighter door does fine on 1/2.

For a replacement we supply and install residential and commercial doors from Garaga, Amarr and Stanley. Steel is the usual choice: a single-layer door where the garage is unheated and lightly used, and a double-layer insulated door where the garage shares a wall with the house. The insulation is either polystyrene, the lighter option, or polyurethane foam, the heavier one. Ask for rubber weather stripping on the top, bottom and sides rather than PVC, which cracks as it ages, and the guide to garage door weather stripping covers what an Ottawa winter does to either. Wood and composite doors suit a house whose front calls for them.

A colour or a panel style is far easier to settle in front of a real door than on a screen, and there are doors to walk up to at the Nepean shop, 46 Grenfell Crescent Unit A. The showroom keeps its own hours, Monday to Friday from 8 to 6 and Saturday from 9 to 2. The phone line is separate and answers around the clock.

The Nepean shop covers the whole city, Kanata, Barrhaven, Orléans, Nepean, Stittsville, Manotick and Gloucester, and the towns around Ottawa: Arnprior and Carleton Place to the west, Rockland to the east, Kemptville to the south. The full list is on the areas page linked below.

The City of Ottawa describes itself as home to over one million people and the fourth largest municipality in the country.

Call (613) 845-9950 at any hour. Have the door type and what you can see or hear ready. A bang from the garage followed by a door that will not lift means a spring. If the door hangs lower on one side, a cable has come off. A blinking light on the opener while the door refuses to close points at the sensors. For a new-door quote with no rush, email info@protechgarage.ca.

The price depends on the part. A torsion spring pair, a cable set, a gear kit and a new opener are four different bills, and a door that needs a spring often needs its cables at the same time. Ask what the visit and the part will cost when you call.