Repairs
The door stopped working. Usually it is one of five things.
Springs, cables, rollers, hinges and panels account for nearly every call we take. Most of them are a same day or next morning fix once we know which one it is.
Chapter 01
What breaks first, and how you can tell
A torsion spring is the part that fails most often, and it fails suddenly. People describe a bang like a gunshot from the garage, and afterwards the door will not lift, or lifts a foot and stops. If you look at the shaft above the door and see a clean gap in the coil, that is the spring and the door should stay shut until it is replaced.
A snapped cable looks different. The door goes up crooked, one side hanging lower than the other, and it may jam in the track. A door that has come off the track entirely is the same family of problem and is the one case where you should stop using the door immediately, because a dangling door can drop.
Rollers, hinges and the track itself fail more slowly. The door gets noisy, it judders on the way up, or it starts to bind at the same point every time. That is wear rather than a break, and it is much cheaper to deal with before it takes something else with it.
Panels are the visible one. A reversing car or a hard frost can crack or bow a section, and on most doors a single panel can be replaced without touching the rest.
Spring, drum and track hardware above a garage door, seen from inside the garage
How a repair call actually runs
Call and leave a message and you will hear back within the hour. If you can, send a couple of photos: one of the whole door from inside the garage, and one of the shaft and spring above it. That is usually enough to know which part is needed and whether it is on the van already.
Customers have sent those photos late in the evening and had an answer the same night. One review on our Google listing describes a spring going at half one on a Wednesday afternoon and the door working again by ten the following morning. That is the normal shape of a spring call, not an exceptional one.
Parts for common residential doors travel on the van. Where a part has to be ordered, you will be told that on the first call rather than after a wasted visit.
Chapter 03
Why a spring is not a do it yourself job
A torsion spring holds the entire weight of the door as stored energy. Releasing it without winding bars, or winding a replacement without knowing the correct turns for the door weight, is how people lose fingers. It is the one part of a garage door where the tools genuinely matter more than the confidence.
There is also a balance question. A spring that is the wrong size for the door will appear to work and will quietly destroy the opener, because the motor ends up lifting weight the spring was supposed to carry. Matching the spring to the door is most of the job.
Every hour of labour we do carries a one year warranty. Parts and doors carry the manufacturer warranty on top of that.
Licensed, bonded and insured in Washington since 2003. Contractor registration DAVESD*975D8.