Broken torsion spring replacement

What happens

What is actually going on

The springs do essentially all the lifting. A double garage door weighs somewhere between 150 and 300 pounds, and the opener is only strong enough to move it because the springs counterbalance almost the whole weight. The opener guides the door. The springs carry it.

Torsion springs sit on a steel shaft above the door opening and store energy by twisting. When one lets go, it releases that energy at once — which is the loud bang people describe, often mistaken for something falling in the garage. The door then becomes its full dead weight, the opener cannot lift it, and lifting it by hand is genuinely dangerous.

Springs are rated in cycles, where one cycle is a single open and close. A standard spring is rated around 10,000 cycles; high-cycle springs run 20,000 to 50,000. A household opening the door four times a day works through a 10,000-cycle spring in roughly seven years. Cold accelerates it — steel contracts and gets more brittle, which is why springs in this market fail disproportionately during the first hard freeze.

Signs

What you would notice

• A loud bang from the garage, after which the door will not open
• A visible gap in the coil of the spring above the door
• The opener strains, hums, or moves the door a few inches and stops
• The door is extremely heavy to lift by hand, or will not budge
• The door opens crooked, or slams down rather than lowering

What we do

What the visit involves

1. Confirm it is the spring and not a cable, drum, or opener gear. These fail with similar symptoms and get misdiagnosed often.
2. Secure the door and release remaining tension with winding bars.
3. Replace both springs as a matched pair, sized to the measured weight and travel of your door.
4. Rebalance the door and check it holds at the halfway point on its own.
5. Reset the opener's force and travel limits, and test the safety reverse.

What it costs

Priced before the work starts

You get the number before we begin, not after. What moves it is the size of the door, the parts it needs, and whether anything else came apart when the first thing failed.

Questions

What people ask

One spring broke. Do both need replacing?

On a two-spring door, yes, and any company telling you otherwise is setting up a second call. Both springs are the same age and have been through the same number of cycles, so the surviving one is at the end of its life too. Replacing one means paying the labour twice within months.

Can I still open the door by hand?

Physically sometimes, safely no. With the spring gone you are lifting the door's full weight — 150 to 300 pounds for a double — with nothing holding it up if you lose your grip. If the car is trapped inside, say so when you call and we will treat it accordingly.

Why do springs break in winter here?

Steel contracts and becomes more brittle as it gets colder, and the grease in the bearings thickens, so the whole system works harder. A spring already near the end of its cycle life tends to give out on the first properly cold morning rather than gradually.

How long does the replacement take?

A standard residential torsion spring replacement is usually well under two hours once the technician is on site, because the parts are already on the truck.

Where we work

Service area

Related

Other things that fail

• Cable, roller and track repair The hardware that guides the door is cheap. What it costs to ignore is not.
• Off-track garage door recovery A door out of its track is under load and holding itself up by accident. Leave it where it is and call.
• Garage door repair, symptom by symptom Almost everything that stops a garage door is one of six parts. You do not need to know which one.