The single most common failure on a residential door, and the one job nobody should attempt from a video. Call (844) 725-2228.
If your door will not lift, the opener strains and clicks, or you heard a bang like a gunshot from the garage overnight, a spring has almost certainly broken. Springs carry the entire weight of the door — the opener only guides it. A two-hundred-pound door with a broken spring is a two-hundred-pound door, and the opener was never built to lift that.
Torsion springs sit on a bar above the door opening and wind up as the door closes. Extension springs run along the horizontal tracks on either side and stretch. Torsion is the better system — smoother, longer-lived, safer when it fails — and it is what most doors built in the last twenty years use. Extension springs are still common on older installations and must have containment cables through them; if yours do not, that is a safety issue regardless of whether the spring has broken.
On a two-spring door, both springs have taken the same number of cycles. When one goes, the other is at the same point in its life and will typically fail within months. Replacing one means paying a second service call shortly afterwards, and it also means the door is unbalanced until then, which wears the opener. We replace in pairs and we say so up front rather than quietly quoting a single spring to look cheaper.
Springs are rated in cycles — one cycle is one open and one close. A standard builder spring is often rated around 10,000 cycles. A household that opens the door four times a day reaches that in roughly seven years. High-cycle springs rated at 25,000 or more cost more up front and last far longer. If your door is the main entrance to the house, high-cycle is usually the better purchase and we will explain the difference in cost rather than deciding for you.
A spring is specified by wire diameter, inside diameter, length and wind direction, and it must be matched to the weight and height of your particular door. A spring that is close but not correct will leave the door heavy at the floor or floating at the top, and it will wear out early. We measure rather than fit whatever is on the van.
A wound torsion spring stores a very large amount of energy. Releasing it without proper winding bars, or using the wrong tool in the winding cone, is how people lose fingers and how bars end up through drywall. This is the one repair on a garage door where the risk is genuinely serious, and it is the reason spring work is priced as skilled labour rather than parts swapping.
We give an appointment window rather than a promise of a specific minute, because a garage door call is scheduled work rather than a roadside emergency. The technician measures the door, confirms the correct spring specification, replaces both springs, sets the winding, balances the door by hand, checks the cables and drums for damage caused by the failure, and re-tests the opener force settings. A door that has been correctly balanced will hold itself halfway open without drifting.