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!
