What should you do when a garage spring breaks?
Garage door springs are always under tension. Properly maintained, they can take the strain of up to 20,000 openings and closings. Before wearing out. It isn’t the garage door motor that handles the weight of your garage door, it’s the garage door spring.
Fortunately, when a garage’s door spring does eventually snap, it doesn’t have any destructive force to cause damage to your door or walls. It won’t uncoil or even appear broken, sometimes the only sign will be that your garage door won’t open when you push the button. Your next step is important, you need to disengage the garage door from the motor.
You can disconnect the door from the motor chain by pulling the red handle if the garage door is safely closed. If the door is up, you will need to proceed with a bit more caution… and maybe an extra pair of hands.
Make sure that the way is clear between the door and the floor, and anything in between the two is in danger of being damaged by or damaging your garage door as it descends. If you have someone to help you, one of you should pull the red handle, hard and straight down, while the other supports the door so it doesn’t drop straight to the ground. Crashing down like that could damage your door panels.
Together now, the two of you can safely lower the door to the ground. Do not reset the connection to the motor chain until the spring has been replaced.
If you’re considering replacing the spring yourself, we don’t recommend it, (and not just because we want you to pay us to do it for you, which is obviously true). The spring you need is based on the size and weight of your garage door.. It is very easy to get the wrong spring and very hard to get the right one. You might be able to decipher the markings on your old spring, but there’s no way to know if the original spring was properly matched to your door, or even left over from a previous garage door. The best plan is to have a professional check your door and match the correct spring to it.
The actual uninstallation of the old and installation of the new spring is quite a process. Pulleys need to be disassembled, braces and cables need to be carefully removed before you can even get at the springs.
The new spring, once installed, needs to be put under the proper amount of tension, which you won’t know offhand and will have to guess at. This part is dangerous, it is not uncommon for people to slip with a tension rod and have it spin free, hitting them in the hand, body or head. For this more than any other reason, we do not recommend trying it yourself.
Finally, the spring will need to be reconnected to the pulleys and the cables to the door. Getting this wrong will make it so the door doesn’t open and can damage the whole door assembly.
If you have a broken spring, please give us a call and we will take care of it for you.
If you’re new to Arizona, I hope these tips and explanations help you prepare for the craziest season of the year here. If you’ve grown up here, these tips will still help and either way, we can take care of any damage or service that your garage doors need, before or after the monsoons hit.
Stay safe and enjoy the raw power of nature here in our beautiful state.