Garage door spring repair is one of the most common types of jobs that we get called in for. The spring is a critically important part of your garage door, and because it does most of the hard work behind lifting the door, it is under considerable stress. In fact, aside from user error (like running your car into your garage door!) broken springs and broken rollers account for almost all the repair jobs that A Plus Garage Doors sees in a given week. Since these two parts are doing most of the work, it makes sense that they will wear out first – the only way to counter this is to use high-quality parts and to keep them well maintained.
If your residential garage door is broken and you haven’t identified the problem yet, the two places that you should begin your search are certainly the spring(s) and the cables. Firstly, locate your garage door’s spring(s). Depending on the size and weight of your door, you should either have one or two springs centered directly in the middle of the door. There are other types of garage door openers, and other configurations that your springs could be installed in, but 99% of garage doors are set up in this normal style. If you have a two-car garage door, you most likely have two springs to lift that door, both situated at the top of the door and along either side of the opener’s track.
Once you have found your springs, visually inspect them to see if they appear to be wound tightly and in regular coils. There should be a mounting bracket in the middle, and if you have two springs, the bracket should be between them. If you see a spring split into multiple sections, a spring that is not tightly wound, or a mounting bracket that is separated from the wall, you have a broken residential garage door spring!
If none of those warning signs stand out to you, the problem might actually be a broken garage door cable. The cables running up either side of your garage door connect the cable drums on either top corner of the door to the bottom brackets beneath them. These cables are wound around the drums whenever the door is lifted, and they support the weight of the door while the spring’s tension is cranking it upwards. The combination of the spring and cables is incredibly efficient, allowing several hundred pounds of garage door to be lifted by the tiny motor in your garage door opener.
Finding out if your cables are broken is quite easy – a visual inspection is all that is required! Just look at the drums and brackets on either side of your garage door, and if you see that the cable running between then is snapped anywhere along its length, you know that your residential garage door cables are broken. You can also spot frayed or weakened cables, and prevent a problem before it actually strikes.
These two steps are the simplest and most common problems that we find on a broken residential garage door, and if your door isn’t working these area a great place to start! Once you have identified the problem, it is important that you contact an industry professional, since the spring and cables are also some of the most dangerous parts of the garage door. The springs and cables are under enormous amounts of pressure, so they are dangerous to handle and can easily injure an untrained homeowner.
