It usually happens on a cold morning. You hear a bang from the garage loud enough that you check the street for a car accident, and when you press the remote the door groans, lifts an inch, and quits. Nine times out of ten a torsion spring has broken.
Springs — not the opener — do the lifting. A standard steel door weighs 150 to 250 pounds, and the opener only supplies the nudge that gets it moving. Springs are rated in cycles: a builder-grade spring is good for roughly 10,000 open-close cycles, which is about seven years for an average household and closer to four if your garage is the door everyone uses.
St. Louis weather shortens that clock. Steel contracts in a January freeze and expands again in August humidity, and a spring near the end of its cycle life often gives up on the first genuinely cold morning of the year. It's no coincidence that our busiest weeks are the first cold snap and the first hard freeze after Christmas.
If you have two springs and one broke, the other has the same age and the same cycles on it, and will fail within months. Replacing both costs far less than a second service call, and matched springs keep the door balanced. Any technician who offers to replace only the broken one is doing you a disservice.
A wound torsion spring stores a startling amount of energy. Unwinding one without the correct winding bars — or with a screwdriver as a substitute — is how people lose fingers. Cable and drum work carries the same hazard. This is the one garage door repair we ask homeowners to leave alone entirely.
Same-day service on most repairs. Flat-rate quote before any work begins.
St. Louis Garage Door Repair is a family-owned garage door service, covering the St. Louis metro on both sides of the river.