Garage Door Springs, Garage Door Torsion Springs

If you’re trying to operate your overhead garage door with the garage door opener and it won’t open or seems to struggle chances are you have a broken garage door spring.

All overhead garage doors regardless of size or style have some type of garage door springs for a counterbalance to the weight of the garage door. Today’s garage doors can weigh as little as 50 pounds all the way up to 700 pounds. The garage door springs make it possible for you to lift your overhead door by hand and also make it possible for the automatic garage door opener to lift the door. When a door is in the closed position the garage door springs are at full load, when the overhead door is in the open position the springs have very little load on them, just enough to hold the door open and without the assistance of the garage door springs your door would be almost impossible to lift.

Your overhead garage door will have one of the following types of springs: extension springs, these are usually found on 8-9’ wide garage doors only, torsion springs, these can be found on any size of garage door and Torquemaster torsion springs which are a proprietary product found only on Wayne-Dalton brand garage doors.

Doors equipped with garage door extension springs will have 1 spring on each side of the garage door and they usually mount at the back of the track and when the garage door is closed the springs will stretch to their fully extended position. These springs are the most dangerous and should be treated with caution.

Overhead doors equipped with garage door torsion springs will be found on a torsion bar which is usually mounted about 12” above the garage door on the front wall. Your overhead door depending on size and weight may have 1, 2 or more garage door springs mounted on this bar. Garage door torsion springs are wound with winding bars and then locked onto the torsion bar with set screws. Garage door torsion springs are fully loaded in the closed position.

Wayne-Dalton garage doors equipped with the Torquemaster system are unique to that brand only and like the conventional torsion springs they mount about 12” directly above the overhead door. The unique difference is the springs are very small in diameter and are actually hidden inside the torsion pipe assembly.

This blog post was provided by Roswell garage door repair company

Garage Door Replacement Torsion Springs (Truth & Lies)

For those of you who have a broken garage door torsion spring and are trying to sort through what’s true and what’s a sales gimmick here is some garage door torsion spring fact and fiction, I hope you’ll find very helpful.

There are two types of garage door replacement torsion springs available. The most common type is the “oil tempered spring”, this particular construction has been around since the beginning of garage doors and is the most commonly found torsion spring. The other type of torsion spring that you’ll find is a galvanized torsion spring that is shiny and is touted to last longer and not get your hands dirty. On a side note we don’t recommend consumers handle the springs so who cares about dirty.

Now assuming that you have two identical doors and one door has oil tempered torsion springs and the other has galvanized torsion springs if they are installed at the same time and used the same amount of cycles then the oil tempered torsion spring would break before the galvanized torsion spring, this is a fact. Now here is where it gets tricky.

It’s extremely important that the proper springs are installed on your garage door the same as it would be that you wear the proper size shoe that fits you. It’s also extremely important for safe operation of the garage door manually and with an automatic garage door opener that the door be balanced so here is why “Oil Tempered Springs” are the only way to go.

The keywords here are a “balanced garage door”. The oil tempered garage door torsion springs installed today will still have essentially the same tensile strength one year from now and if the garage door was balanced it will still be balanced a year later. The galvanized garage door torsion springs will have lost approximately 9-15% of their tensile strength causing the garage door to no longer be balanced. In order to re-balance the door a service visit will be required at an added cost to you and tension will be added to the door. Each time tension is added to your garage door you shorten the life of the spring and since galvanized torsion springs continue to lose their tensile strength you’ll need to re-balance the door every year until the spring breaks.

Oil tempered garage door torsion springs cost a few bucks more but you’ll save big in the long run!