How And When To Change Garage Door Spring?

A smoothly operating garage door is vital to the upkeep of your home. It’s something that is used daily when you park your ride, store your tools or even put away bicycles. To get all your items inside and out of the garage when needed, you need your garage door to function properly at all times. The main component that is responsible for the garage door’s smooth operation is the garage door spring. If the garage door spring gets damaged, it can make retrieving your items from the garage a nuisance. If your spring gets damaged, we will also discuss how to choose a garage door’s broken spring.

How to Know If Spring Is Damaged?

• Hear Weird Noise When Opening the Door: Homeowners might hear loud sounds coming from the garage area and thinking that probably someone got into your garage. After investigation, it usually turns out to be a faulty spring unwinding and creating crashing noises.
• Gap In Torsion Spring: If you spot a gap between your torsion spring, it’s a clear sign that the garage door spring is compromised.
• Garage Door Top Is Bent: In some cases when spring breaks, the garage door will bend at the top if you try to open it.  This happens because the garage door’s weight is being supported by mechanics alone without any spring to create torque.
• Garage Door Movements Feel Weird: If you have a garage door with a two-spring system and movement is not smooth. The door sometimes gets stuck on its way to open and movements are jerky. It’s a sign that springs are failing or completely broken.
• Loose Components: When garage door springs break, the entire garage door components become out of sync. The pulley and cables become loose and make the overall garage door operation hard.

How to Choose Garage Door Spring?

Garage door springs are mainly of two types; extension and torsion springs. Both options have excellent designs and reliability but they are meant to operate differently from one another. You can ensure a successful spring replacement by understanding what type of garage door you have.

• Extension Springs: Extension springs are installed at both sides of the door and horizontally extend across the garage door. These types of springs are easy to install and best for overhead single-car garage doors.
• Torsion Springs: More common type of spring, the torsion is wounded springs that attach on top of the garage door. They don’t particularly expand or contract and offer much smoother operation and support garage door weight with ease. Compared to extension springs, they are much difficult to install and mostly installed in much bigger garage doors meant for multiple vehicle parking.

To simply state, if you have a single car garage then an extension spring will do the job nicely. If you are looking for a smoother movement and ability to lift heavier garage doors, then torsion springs are the way to go.