You’re about to leave the house—you hit the garage door opener, but nothing happens. Now what? There’s a good chance your garage door spring is broken and needs replacing. Before we provide tips for how to tell if garage door spring is broken, we advise you to leave it up a certified garage door technician to fix the broken spring.
Replacing broken torsion springs can be dangerous and takes years of experience and technical skills to do it safely and efficiently.
How to Tell If Garage Door Spring Is Broken: Torsion Springs 101
First, let’s familiarize you with the torsion spring. Look at your garage door from inside the garage; the long spring-mounted along the top of the door is the torsion spring. This mechanism plays a big part in the opening and closing of your garage door.
Cables attached to the spring wind up as the garage door opens. The torsion spring is a wound spring—a type of spring that has a lot of tension and harbours a large amount of mechanical energy a.k.a. built-up power from its’ winding motion. When you open the garage door, the energy is released and transferred to the spring, lifting the door up.
The torsion spring’s average life span is seven years or 10,000 cycles. Keep in mind that the rust and cold weather can weaken the springs which can lead to damage. That’s why we highly recommend an annual garage door maintenance check-up with our garage door repair experts.
Step 1 to How to Tell if Garage Door Spring Is Broken: Check the Spring’s Appearance
A simple way to detect a broken spring is just by looking at it. Here are some major red flags:
- The spring is stretched out, which indicates that there’s no mechanical tension or energy. You’ll notice this when the garage door is closed.
- A two-inch gap in the spring. When a torsion spring is at the end of its life span, the tension is lost, causing the spring to snap. There should be a visible gap where the break occurred.
Step 2: Check The Garage Door’s Appearance and How It Functions
Another way to tell if your torsion spring needs replacing is by checking the garage door itself. Check for these signs:
- The garage door looks crooked or off track when opening and closing.
- The top section of the door is bent or misaligned.
- The garage door opens up a couple of inches then closes.
- The garage door falls harshly when closing.
- The garage door doesn’t open at all.
- The cables attached to the springs are dangling.
Step 3: Take Note of Any Loud Noises
If your torsion spring has snapped, you’ll likely hear a loud bang. The torsion spring contains vast amounts of pressure and energy and is bound to make quite the noise when they break.
Torsion springs rotate around a shaft above the door. When the torsion spring breaks, you’ll also hear a rapid and harsh sound as the spring spirals out of the shaft.
Garage doors typically create a buzzing mechanical sound. Don’t mistake this as the sound from a broken spring. If you’re unsure, call a garage door expert.
Alpha Doors—Best Garage Door Repairs in Nanaimo!
We can’t stress enough the dangers of replacing your own garage door torsion spring. That’s why we’re here—to fix it and prevent any injuries.
Repairing a broken torsion spring requires special tools and expertise. Safety measures are needed to conduct the proper replacement of the spring.
Contact Alpha Doors today to safely replace your garage door’s torsion springs, or for any other garage door repairs!