Garage Door Springs

Most garage door problems occur slowly.  The door gets harder to open, it makes more noise than usual, or the opener seems to be straining more than it used to.  These kinds of problems are often caused by the door rollers and tracks wearing out, binding, or going out of adjustment.  Other times, these issues are a sign that the garage door opener is about due for a replacement.  Some careful lubrication and adjustment or replacing the opener will often get your garage door back on track. 

Either of these problems you can choose to take care of yourself or let a professional garage door service handle it.  However, there is one garage door repair that you never want to tackle on own – a broken or misadjusted spring.

Garage doors are much heavier than they seem.  That’s because large springs are used to assist with opening the door.  There are two types of garage door springs.  Torsion springs are coiled up over the head of the door, and tension springs extend along the top side rails of the door track. 

Both types of springs can break, making the door much more difficult to open.  If you think your garage door springs are broken or out of adjustment, do not attempt to fix it yourself.  Garage door springs are under very high tension and one wrong move can cause severe injuries or even death. 

Adjusting or replacing garage door springs one of those jobs you should leave to a professional garage door service.  The risk of injury or death is just too high.  If your garage door springs need to be repaired or replaced, do yourself a favor and call a garage door service professional.

Checking References

You have decided to upgrade to new garage doors and are going to hire a garage door service company to complete the project.  You have narrowed your search down, and all that is left before deciding is to check the references.  But, how do you do that?

During the interview project with your garage door contractor, ask for a list of three to four references.  Ideally, you want past customers that have done business with the contractor over a period of time – some recent, and some historical.

Then, call the references.  Do not be embarrassed about asking for references, or for calling and checking references.  When you call the potential reference, simply identify yourself as a potential customer of the company, and ask a series of questions.  Plan on the conversation lasting less than 15 minutes. 

Some questions to ask include:

  1. What type of project did you have done?
  2. How satisfied were you with the work completed?
  3. Would you use this company again?  Why or why not?
  4. Can you recommend this company to perform my project?  (Elaborate here a bit on what you are having done, unless the work performed for the past customer was identical to your anticipated project.)
  5. If you had one suggestion for improvement for this company, what would it be?
  6. Did the company clean up their mess afterwards, and were there any additional expenses?
  7. Did you need to have any warranty work done, or any repairs on the project?  If so, were they responsive to your needs?
  8. Is there anything else you would like to tell me?

For more information on how to hire a garage door contractor, see our post on hiring.