Springs do 90% of the work of lifting your garage door. The opener does the remaining 10. When a spring breaks, the system stops working all at once — the door won’t budge, or it falls fast and crooked, and the opener strains audibly trying to lift a 180-pound slab on its own. Spring replacement is the most common repair we run, and it’s also the one we won’t let homeowners do themselves. A torsion spring under tension stores enough energy to break a wrist or an eye socket if it slips. We stock the four most common wire gauges and inch-pound ratings on every truck, replace springs in pairs, and warranty the springs we install for the life of the door.
Torsion vs. extension, and which yours is
Torsion springs sit on a shaft above the closed door and wind tighter as the door comes down. They’re the modern standard — quieter, longer-lived, safer when they fail. Extension springs run along the horizontal tracks on either side of the door and stretch as the door lowers. They’re older, common on doors installed before the late 1990s, and require safety cables threaded through them so a broken spring can’t fly across the garage. If you can see two long springs running parallel to the ceiling on each side of the door, you have extension. One shaft with springs centered above the door means torsion. We replace both types and will quietly recommend upgrading extension to torsion if your headroom allows — it’s a safer, longer-lasting system.
How a spring tells you it’s about to go
- A loud bang from the garage when nothing was happening — that’s the spring
- A visible gap in the coils of an otherwise tightly-wound torsion spring
- The door opens half-speed on cold mornings
- The opener strains audibly during the first foot of travel, then runs normally
- The door drops faster than it used to when you disengage the opener
What a spring replacement actually involves
We unwind the broken spring (or the partner spring, which is at the same fatigue point), remove it from the shaft, install new galvanized springs sized to the door’s exact weight and travel — not a “close enough” stock spring — then wind the springs to the correct turn count and balance-test the door. A balanced door stays put at any height when you let go of it. If yours didn’t before, it will after we leave. Total time on site is usually 60 to 90 minutes for a standard 7′ or 8′ door, longer for 14′ tall RV doors or commercial sections. The opener gets its travel and force limits re-calibrated so it isn’t fighting the new spring tension on day one.
Specs, cycles, and the lifetime warranty
We install springs rated for 25,000 cycles minimum — roughly 20 years of normal residential use. Most stock springs builders install are 10,000-cycle. The wire gauge is matched to the door (0.207″ through 0.250″ for residential, heavier for commercial), and the IPPT — inch-pounds per turn — is calculated from door weight, not guessed. The springs we install are warrantied for the life of the door, transferable to the next owner. If one of our springs ever breaks, the replacement is free; only the labor is billable, and we’ve never had to refuse a warranty claim in 18 years of running this business.