Garage Doors-Maintaining the Monsters - Angel Home Inspections

Garage Doors–Maintaining the Monsters

By Inspector Bill

What is the heaviest moving object in your home? If you said the “garage door,” you’re either very smart or read the title of this blog. Either way, you will now understand the importance of maintaining your garage door. Most folks take their garage door for granted; pull-up and press a button, and the door opens. This happens everyday for years—until it doesn’t. Once a problem arises it can be expensive to fix. Routine care can extend the life of a garage door and its components and ensure the safest operation possible. Several of the tasks to keep a garage door operating safely and smoothly are fairly easy. Other tasks are best left to professionals.

Problems with garage doors tend to compound. For example, one of the torsion springs breaks. These springs serve as a counterbalance to offset the weight of the door. Without the springs, a normal person could not even lift a garage door. When the spring breaks or slips, the garage door opener is lifting a much greater weight than intended. This extra strain can sheer parts in the electric opening mechanism. Worse, the broken spring can throw the door’s balance off and cause the doors to crumple when opened. So, a simple spring problem can lead to replacing the electric opener and possibly the door itself. What should have been a $250-$350 repair to replace a spring ends up costing $2,500 or more. Whew! Replacing springs is dangerous. And I do need to add, please leave spring replacement to professionals.

Now that you are startled, let’s look at what homeowners can do to protect and preserve the garage door. The most important steps to extend the life of a garage door are to limit use and perform MAINTENANCE! Some simple preventative maintenance tasks can go a long way in extending the life of your garage door. These tasks require little more than a screwdriver, a couple of wrenches, and some penetrating spray lube.

Limit Use Of Garage Doors

The best way to limit garage door use is to simply go through home’s pedestrian doors more often. A lot of homeowners with an attached garage use the door to enter and exit their home almost exclusively. That is a bad habit. Like any mechanical system the less you use it the longer it will last. Overuse most commonly leads to failure of the door’s springs. When the spring fails it may eventually lead to other damage as well. When torsion springs break, it is not always easy to see(Figure 1 shows two torsion springs).

Figure 1: Garage door torsion spring–repair and replacement best left to professionals.

Every garage door opening system has a life cycle. Eventually torsion springs will break. Through overuse the spring will break sooner. The average torsion spring will break after approximately 10,000 cycles. If you open and close the door twice a day in five years that is 7,500 cycles. If you use the garage door four times a day the number of cycles doubles to 15,000 in that same five years. The average garage door goes through ten cycles a day—you do the math.

Garage Door Maintenance

As previously discussed, most home owners can perform routine maintenance on a garage door. Although there are other maintenance tasks, here are some well-established home owner tips and pointers for keeping the door operating smoothly and safely:

1. Inspect the garage door every six months

This is not some “technical inspection” but simply a quick check for obvious things. Use your senses and you will catch most issues. Visually check that the door is aligned square within its opening. If it isn’t square, consult a professional. Watch it during an opening/closing cycle. Does it lurch or shake or move in jerks? Listen as the door moves. Do you hear squealing, grinding or knocking noises? Touch handles, hinges, and the surface of the door. Does anything feel loose or wobbly? Release the door from the electric opening mechanism by pulling the red handle. Can you raise the door with minimal effort? If you can’t open the door manually, that is a sure sign that something is wrong, most likely a broken spring. In such case, DO NOT open and close the door until you consult a professional.

2. Lubricate the Garage Door’s Moving Parts

Perhaps the single most important(and easiest) maintenance task is to lubricate all the hinges and rollers. Especially if you heard squealing and squeaking during the inspection. Before lubricating, use a clean rag or towel and wipe down the side rollers, tracks, and hinges. You don’t want the spray lube pushing dirt and debris into the various lubricating points.

Figure 2: Garage door hinge and roller lubricating points.

Once everything is clean, use a silicon spray lube or a spray product specifically made for garage doors. Any hardware store or big box building material store will have a product you can use. Two important notes: First, do not use WD-40. The old standby, WD-40 is good at freeing stuck parts and other things but it provides very little actual lubrication and attracts dust and other contaminants. Second, the surface of the rollers and the tracks do not get lube (the red arrows in Figure 2). If some over spray gets on these parts, simply wipe it off.

Using the spray lube with the straw attached, lubricate all springs, chains, hinges, and the roller pins (not the rollers themselves). Each roller should move in and out and spin freely. Figure 2’s green arrows show some lubricating points for the hinges and roller pins.

You may need a step stool to reach the opener chain and the door springs. Please be careful. Run the door through a couple of cycles to ensure good lube penetration. Afterward wipe off any lube runs or over-spray. Now stand back and listen. You will probably hear an noticeable difference in the operation of the garage door. Congratulate yourself on a job well-done.

Good lubrication is the elixir of life for mechanical moving parts.

3. Clear Tracks and Tighten Hardware

Remove rust and debris from the tracks on both sides of the garage door. If you are comfortable with sockets and wrenches check and tighten all hardware fasteners. These include the brackets holding the tracks to the wall and ceiling, plus fasteners securing the garage door opener unit. Door vibration can loosen hardware so use a socket wrench to tighten loose bolts. Check the bolts and screws securing the hinges to the doors and tighten if loose. However, do not attempt to loosen or tighten red nuts and bolts on garage doors. Red is an international danger sign and on garage door mechanisms they indicate the risk of injury or death.

Wrap-Up

The big take aways are do not overuse the garage door and do not let your garage door become the tinman. The maintenance tasks discussed will go a long way to preserving the health and safety of your garage door. If you aren’t comfortable with performing any of these tasks yourself, consult a local garage door installer. By following a good preventative maintenance plan your garage door should last for years with minimal costs. Some links to other garage door care

are included below.