What Was That Loud Bang? (And Other Garage Door Spring FAQs)
If you’ve recently heard a loud bang from your garage or are suddenly struggling or unable to open your garage door, there may be a simple explanation. In the face of declining temperatures, your door’s torsion spring may have become brittle and broken. If that’s the case, you should contact your local garage door experts ASAP to have your garage door spring replaced and get your door back in order.
If you were at home when it happened, you heard it. It would have sounded like someone fired a high-powered rifle or set off an incredibly powerful firecracker in your garage. It may have happened when you were opening the door, or it may have happened while you were watching your favorite TV show. But whenever it happens, you now have a garage door that you can barely open or maybe a door you can’t open at all. You have a broken garage door spring.
In this month’s article, we’re going to take a look at garage door springs – we’ll look at their role, what can cause them to break, why they make such a racket when they fail, and we’ll wind things up (get it?) with a discussion of what to do when you suffer a broken torsion spring.
Why Does My Garage Door Have Springs?
Your garage door is incredibly heavy—so heavy that most people would struggle even to raise it a few inches, much less lift it high enough to get a car into the garage. Even powerful garage door openers cannot lift doors with broken garage door springs.
Fortunately, neither you nor your door opener usually has to lift more than just a fraction of your door’s weight to lift it into the open position. An overhead garage door takes advantage of one or more large steel springs that boost any force applied to lift the door – providing the “muscle” that lets a heavy door be opened easily and lowered under control. These springs are under relatively low tension when the door is open; the act of lowering the door winds the springs, creating more tension to help lift the door when the time comes.
We used the term “relatively” here because even the “unwound” springs on an open door are still under an incredible amount of tension. That leads us to our next point…
No, You Can’t Replace a Broken Spring Yourself
We’re not saying this for sales reasons. We’re saying it because torsion springs and the cables that connect them to the door mechanism are incredibly dangerous. A loose spring or the end of a broken cable travels almost as fast as and carries considerably more energy than a bullet from a gun. Homeowners, and even trained professionals, have been injured, maimed, and even killed while trying to replace a broken torsion spring.
There are no user-serviceable parts in your door’s springs or cable systems.
What Is That Loud Bang in My Garage?
If you doubted the amount of force contained in a torsion spring, think back to the beginning of this article: just the sound coming from a spring breaking can be almost loud enough to deafen you for a few minutes. That loud noise is the sound of steel – heavy steel – being torn apart by the immense forces that it’s subjected to around the clock.
If you can still open your garage door after the spring breaks, you’ll hear a loud, repetitive banging sound every time you try to open the door. That sound is the noise of the two broken ends of the torsion spring slipping past each other at every revolution of the door’s winding mechanism.
You’ll also notice that your garage door opener is much louder and probably making some very expensive-sounding grinding and groaning noises. Those sounds indicate that your opener is severely overworked. Trying to use your garage door more than a couple of times while it’s in this state is almost sure to destroy the gear assembly or burn up the electric motor, leading to an expensive replacement.
Why Did My Garage Door Spring Break Now?
Steel is a funny substance. It is unbelievably strong in most situations. It makes our cars safer for drivers and passengers, it provides the structure for skyscrapers, dams, and other massive structures, and it is even commonly used as a shorthand term for something that is “very strong” (Superman is the “Man of Steel,” after all).
But that strength comes with a price—due to steel’s crystalline structure, it has a unique shortcoming. When it gets cold, steel gets brittle. So, as we’re entering the coldest months of the Middle Georgia year, garage door springs will be more likely to break now than once the weather warms back up in the spring. In fact, at Overhead Door Company of Macon-Warner Robins, we see about 40% more spring replacement service calls during these months.
How Can I Prevent a Broken Garage Door Spring?
The most significant step you can take to prevent a broken garage door spring is to have your door regularly serviced and maintained by a team of local garage door experts. They’ll be able to adjust your door’s mechanisms, ensure that moving parts are properly lubricated, and perform other maintenance tasks that keep your door running smoothly, putting less strain on your door’s torsion springs.
Another step you can take is to keep your garage warmer when the temps drop to freezing or below. Even just keeping the door shut as much as possible and ensuring that your door’s weather seals are intact can help keep your garage warm enough to keep springs more supple and less likely to break.
Thinking Ahead About Garage Door Springs
Garage door springs break – it’s not a matter of “if” but of “when” you’ll experience a broken spring. If your door is equipped with two springs, and one breaks, you may be tempted to just replace the bad spring and keep moving. That may not be your best bet. Remember, up until the one spring both, the two springs were carrying equal loads – which means they’ve experienced equal wear and tear.
If your two-spring garage door has a single broken spring, you’re time and money ahead to replace both springs at the same time. It may cost a little more now, but you’ll be saving yourself the time, trouble, and expense of needing another service call in a few weeks’ or months’ time.
Broken Garage Door Spring? We’re Ready to Spring Into Action!
If your garage door is currently offline thanks to a broken torsion spring, Overhead Door Company of Macon-Warner Robins is here to help. Our team of experts can replace any torsion spring on any garage door and have you back in working order fast. When you call us for a garage door repair, we’ll be there within 48 hours to make the fix and get you back to your busy schedule!
Call Overhead Door Company of Macon-Warner Robins at 478-474-4347 to schedule a repair!
Areas We Serve
No matter where you live in Middle Georgia, Overhead Door Company of Macon-Warner Robins is ready to help provide you with the garage door solutions you need!
- Macon
- Warner Robins
- Perry
- Bonaire
- Kathleen
- Forsyth
- Barnesville
- Milledgeville
- Jeffersonville
- Fort Valley
- Byron
- Unadilla
- Hawkinsville
