Broken Spring Replacement · Kitchener

Garage Door Spring Replacement in Kitchener

A broken spring is the most common garage door call in Kitchener and the one with the least room for improvisation. The right spring is the one matched to the door, not the one that happens to be on the truck.

You usually know. There was a bang from the garage, often early on a cold morning, and now the door will not lift, or the opener strains and gives up a few inches off the floor. Look up at the shaft above the door: a torsion spring that has broken shows a clean gap of a few centimetres in the coil. On an older door with extension springs along the horizontal tracks, a broken spring hangs slack or lies on the floor. Either way, stop using the opener. It is not built to lift the door's full weight, and forcing it bends the top section and strips the gear.

Torsion or extension

Torsion springs are mounted on a shaft above the door and wind up as the door closes. Most Kitchener doors from the 1990s onward have one or two of them. Extension springs run along the sides parallel to the tracks and stretch as the door closes; they are common on older single doors and lighter doors. Extension springs must have a safety cable threaded through them, as DASMA's inspection checklist requires, so that a broken spring is contained rather than thrown across the garage. If yours do not have one, that is corrected during the replacement.

What the job involves

• Weighing the door. The spring is sized to the door's weight, its height and the drum. A spring chosen by eye, or by matching the broken one that may itself have been wrong, is the reason some replacements last three years instead of seven. DASMA's Technical Data Sheet 190 lists the wrong spring and the wrong number of turns among the main causes of early failure.
• Replacing both springs on a two-spring door. They have done the same cycles; the survivor is at the same point in its life.
• Winding to the manufacturer's turns, in the right direction, with proper winding bars, then setting the cones.
• Checking cables, drums, bearings and rollers while the tension is off, because a frayed cable found now is a cheap fix and found in a month is another call-out.
• Balancing the door. With the opener disconnected the door should stay put at halfway. If it does not, the spring is wrong.
• Resetting the opener's travel and force and running the reversal tests.

Standard or high-cycle

The standard residential spring is built for about 10,000 cycles. Garaga's figure of roughly 1,500 cycles a year for a typical household puts that at five to seven years. High-cycle springs with heavier wire are rated for several times as many and cost more. On a door used as the front door, which describes most of the subdivisions in Doon South and Huron Park, they are often worth it. On a door opened twice a week they are not. It is explained as a choice, not an upsell.

Why not do it yourself

Because the industry whose products these are says not to. DASMA's checklist states that springs and spring hardware are under high tension and that all repairs and adjustments must be performed by a trained door systems technician using proper tools. A wound torsion spring releases its energy all at once if a bar slips or a set screw is loosened in the wrong order, and the injuries are to hands, face and head. It is a one-to-two-hour job for someone who does it daily.

Frequently asked questions

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