Garage Door Spring Repair in Faribault, MN
Garage door spring repair in the Faribault area means a new spring sized to your door's weight, and a door balanced so the opener, and your arm, only have to guide it again.
If you heard a loud bang from the garage and the door now won't open, or opens a few inches and stops, a spring has almost certainly broken. Leave the door closed and read on before touching it.
Signs a spring has gone
A bang like a gunshot from the garage, often when nobody was using the door. A torsion spring is under the most tension when the door is closed, so that's when many of them finally let go.
A gap in the coil
Look at the bar above the closed door. A broken torsion spring shows a clean break, often a few inches wide.
The door is suddenly very heavy, or won't stay up when lifted by hand.
The opener strains, hums, or lifts the door a few inches and stops
Many openers sense the extra weight and reverse, so the problem looks like the opener's fault.
The door opens crooked, one side ahead of the other. On doors with a spring along each track, one of them has lost tension.
The door drops fast in the last foot of closing instead of settling.
Heard a bang and now the door won't lift? Leave it closed and tell us what you can see above the door.
Contact UsMake it safe until it's fixed
A wound spring stores enough energy to break bones, and a door with a broken one is carrying its full weight on whatever holds it up. Until it's repaired:
Don't lift the door by hand, and don't keep pressing the opener button
The opener isn't built to lift the door's weight, and repeated tries can strip its gears.
Don't pull the emergency release while the door is open
With no spring holding it, the door can come down at full weight.
Don't try to loosen, wind or adjust a torsion spring
The winding cones hold the stored energy, and they are where the serious injuries in this trade happen.
Keep children and pets away from the door, and park elsewhere if the door is stuck partway open.
If a car is stuck inside, say so when you get in touch.
Torsion springs and extension springs
Torsion springs sit on a steel bar above the closed door. They twist to store energy and turn drums that wind the lift cables.
Most doors built in recent decades use them. They lift more smoothly than extension springs and are safer when they fail, because the spring stays on its bar.
Extension springs run along the horizontal tracks on each side and stretch as the door closes. They are common on older and lighter doors. Each one needs a safety cable threaded through it: without that cable, a spring that snaps can whip across the garage.
If yours has none, that's worth fixing whether or not the spring has broken.
Converting an older extension-spring door to torsion springs is possible on most doors and is a fair thing to ask about while the door is already being worked on.
What happens on a spring repair
The broken spring is identified and measured
Wire size, inside diameter, length and wind direction. Guessing any of these produces a door that won't balance.
The door's weight is taken into account
The right spring is the one that carries your door, not the nearest one on the truck.
The old spring comes off under control, with the tension released before anything is unbolted.
The new spring is fitted and wound or set, and the cables are checked on their drums so both sides lift evenly.
The door is balanced and tested
With the opener disengaged, the door should stay roughly where you leave it at waist height, then open and close cleanly on the opener.
Tell us what the door is doing
A sentence or two is plenty to start. You don't need to know the name of the part that's failed.
One spring or both?
On a door with two springs, both have lifted the same door the same number of times. When one breaks, the other is usually close behind.
Replacing both at once saves a second visit and keeps the door balanced, because a new spring working next to a worn one pulls unevenly.
Ask whoever you call what they recommend for your door and why. On a single-spring door, the question is whether the door would lift better on two.
What drives the cost of spring repair
Torsion or extension, and on torsion doors, one spring or two.
The door's size and weight
A double door, a wooden door or an insulated steel door needs heavier springs than a light single door.
The spring's cycle rating
Springs are rated by how many open-and-close cycles they're built for. Higher-cycle springs cost more and last longer on a door that's used many times a day.
What else has worn
Cables frayed where they meet the drums, rollers that have been dragging, or worn bearings on the torsion bar are cheaper to replace on the same visit.
A conversion from extension to torsion springs, if you choose one.
How long should springs last?
It depends on use far more than age. A spring rated for a set number of cycles on a door opened four times a day lasts years longer than the same spring on a door that is the household's front entrance.
Cold weather adds strain in towns with hard winters, which is why so many springs break on the first cold mornings of the season.
If your springs broke sooner than you'd expect, ask about a higher-cycle spring.
The difference in price is usually small next to a second repair.
When it isn't the spring
The spring looks whole but the door hangs crooked or a cable is loose
Nothing has broken, but the door is noisy or slow
A maintenance visit checks the springs before they fail.
Common questions
Can I replace a garage door spring myself?
Extension springs, with safety cables in place and the door fully open and clamped, are a job some homeowners take on.
Torsion springs are not. Winding one takes proper winding bars and knowledge of the exact spring, and a slip releases the full stored energy through your hands. This is the one garage door repair where hiring someone is about safety as much as convenience.
Can I open the door to get my car out?
Not safely with a broken spring. Leave it closed and mention the car when you get in touch.
Why did my spring break when nobody was using the door?
Springs fatigue a little every cycle, and a torsion spring is wound tightest when the door is closed. The last crack often gives way then, and cold makes spring steel more brittle. It isn't a sign that something else went wrong.
Does a new spring need a new opener?
Rarely. But if the opener has been straining against a broken spring, it's worth checking that its gears haven't stripped.
Other garage door services
Garage Door Cable Repair
Frayed, snapped or slipped lift cables, and doors hanging crooked.
Read more →Garage Door Opener Repair
Openers that hum, reverse or won't respond, and new openers when repair isn't worth it.
Read more →Garage Door Maintenance
A tune-up that checks springs, cables, rollers and safety reversal before anything fails.
Read more →Get in touch
Tell us whether it's a single or double door, what you heard, whether the door moves at all, and whether a car is stuck inside.
A photo of the spring above the door, taken from the floor with the door closed, helps us see the spring type and the break.