Services
Grouped by the symptom that sent you looking, because almost nobody starts out knowing which part let go - and there is no reason you should. Describe the behaviour, and the group it belongs to is nearly always obvious.
By symptom
Three groups, eight services. Pick the description that sounds like your door and the work under it is what usually fixes it.
The door is dead, opens a few inches and stops, or came down hard. This is nearly always the counterbalance or the motor driving it. Do not force a door in this state by hand - with a broken spring it is carrying its whole weight and there is nothing holding it up.
Torsion and extension springs. We weigh the door and measure its travel before ordering anything, because a spring rated for the wrong load is the single most common reason a door is back within a year. Springs are replaced in matched pairs where the door has two - leaving one old spring beside a new one just books the next visit.
Logic boards, gear sets, trolleys, belts and chains, remotes, wall consoles, keypads and photo-eye sensors. Before any opener goes on a door we balance the door, because an opener fitted to an unbalanced door spends its life lifting weight it was never rated for, and it will fail the same way the last one did.
Grinding, banging, shuddering, or a door that sits visibly out of square in the opening. These are the cheap parts failing, and they are worth catching early: rollers, cables and track cost little on their own and a great deal once they have damaged the sections or the opener.
Frayed, slack or jumped cables; rollers worn flat or seized on their stems; horizontal and vertical track knocked out of line. We check that the track is plumb and square where it meets the brackets rather than just bending the visible damage back, since the bracket is usually what moved in the first place.
A door out of its track, closing unevenly, or binding at the same point in every cycle. We re-seat the door, correct what pulled it out of alignment, and replace parts that have been bent past a reliable repair rather than straightening them and hoping.
A scheduled visit covering balance, spring condition, cable and drum wear, roller and hinge condition, track alignment, fastener torque, sensor alignment and lubrication. The point is to find the parts that wear quietly while they are still inexpensive, rather than after they have taken something else with them.
Impact damage, split or rotted sections, or a door old enough that repairs have stopped being worth it. This is the group where the honest answer is sometimes that you should stop spending money on the door you have, and we will say so.
Individual sections replaced where the rest of the door is still sound, which is usually far cheaper than a full door. We confirm the section still matches once it is hung and re-check the balance afterward, because a door that has had a section swapped is not carrying the same weight it was before.
Full replacement when repair has stopped making sense. We fit the opening rather than the catalogue, set the springs to the actual weight of the door that is going on, and check the balance and the safety reversal before we leave. A door lives or dies on how it was installed.
Roll-up and sectional doors for shops, bays, storage and warehouses. Commercial doors cycle far more often than residential ones, so wear items are inspected on a shorter interval and we plan the work around a door being out of service costing you more than the repair.
Detail
The same sequence every time, whichever of the eight above brought us out.
It starts with the door disconnected from the opener and moved by hand. That one step tells us more than anything else: a balanced door stops and holds wherever you leave it, and a door that slams down or flies up is telling you the springs are wrong before a single part is removed. From there we work through the counterbalance - spring condition and wind, cable seating on both drums, drum alignment - then the guidance, meaning rollers, hinges, and whether the track is plumb and square where it meets its brackets. The opener is checked last, because on a door with a balance problem the opener is a symptom rather than a cause, and replacing it first is how people end up buying three of them.
Then you get the findings before the work starts: what failed, what caused it, what has to be handled now, and what can wait. That middle item is the one most estimates skip. A cable does not fray on its own, it frays against something, and if the something is still there the new cable will do exactly what the old one did. Where a cause can be corrected in the same visit we correct it, and where it needs a part we do not carry, you are told that rather than being given a repair that we already know is temporary.
Work finishes with the door cycled several times under its own opener while you watch, the balance re-tested by hand, and the safety reversal confirmed on contact with the floor and through the photo eyes. You get shown what changed and what to watch for. Anything we removed leaves with us.
Two things worth knowing about how we price this, neither of which involves a number on a web page. The first is that the estimate comes after the inspection rather than before it, because a figure quoted down the phone is a guess dressed up as a commitment, and it only ever moves in one direction once somebody is standing in front of the door. The second is that the estimate separates what is needed now from what is merely worn, so you are deciding rather than being told. If you want only the necessary work done, that is a normal thing to ask for and it will not change how the job is handled.
Finally, the part most people ask about after the fact: what makes a repair come back. In our experience it is almost always one of three things - a spring matched to the wrong weight, a cause left in place while its symptom was replaced, or an opener asked to do the work the springs should have been doing. All three are avoidable on the first visit, and all three are why we measure the door before we quote it rather than after.
Questions
General questions about how garage doors work and fail.
It is the one job on a garage door we would tell anyone to leave alone. A torsion spring stores enough energy to break bones, it is wound under load with bars that have to be controlled the whole way, and the failure mode is sudden. Almost everything else on a door is approachable with patience. This one is not.
Steel gets less forgiving as it gets colder, so a spring that has already used up most of its rated cycles is the one that lets go on a hard freeze. The cold did not wear the spring out - it just picked the morning. Grease also thickens in cold, which makes rollers and hinges drag and gives the opener more to fight against.
Close it, pull the release cord to disconnect the opener, then lift the door by hand to about waist height and let go. A balanced door stays put. If it drops or rises on its own the springs are no longer matched to the weight of the door, and the opener is making up the difference every single cycle.
Photo eyes. They project a beam across the opening, and a door that is closing must reverse if the beam is broken. If your door refuses to close and the opener light blinks, the usual cause is one eye knocked out of alignment or a lens covered in dust or cobweb - not a fault in the door.
Yes, and not with the general-purpose spray most people reach for, which is a solvent that strips lubricant rather than leaving it. Use a proper garage door lubricant on rollers, hinges, bearings and the spring itself. Never lubricate the track - the rollers are meant to roll along it, and a greasy track collects grit and makes it worse.
Springs are rated in cycles rather than years, where one cycle is one open and one close. A household that comes and goes several times a day gets through that rating far faster than the calendar suggests. This is why two identical doors fitted the same week can fail years apart, and why cycle rating is worth asking about when springs are replaced.
It is usually early warning. Grinding tends to mean rollers or bearings, a bang on start-up often means the springs, and a rattle is normally loose hardware. None of those are urgent on the day, but all of them wear something more expensive if they are left, so a noise that is new is worth looking at while it is still just a noise.
Often just the section, provided the rest of the door is sound and the section is still available. Where it stops making sense is when the door is old enough that the profile is discontinued, or when several sections are affected. We will tell you which situation you are in before you commit to either.
Next step
Tell us what the door is doing, in whatever words you have - what it sounds like, when it started, whether it moves at all. We will tell you what that means. Estimates are free.
