What Happens When Garage Door Springs Break


Estimated read time: 4 minutes.

Something that might get a lot of attention from people if you know someone it has happened to recently is a broken garage door spring. And rightly so, it’s probably one of the most dangerous and alarming things that can happen when it comes to your garage door so most people get pretty surprised when it happens and can even get scared when it first happens. In this article we’ll take a look at the garage door spring in particular and what happens when it breaks and why your garage door spring snaps. This should hopefully help you to not be as alarmed or surprised if or when your garage door spring breaks. The disappointing thing is that your garage door springs are most likely going to break before the rest of your garage door which means they will need to be replaced. However, the flip side of this is that your garage door will continue to work with the replacement of the broken garage door springs pretty much just as well as it was when it was brand new. Replacing your garage door springs is pretty essential and there are some DIY videos and what not out there but we can’t really recommend those here. They are tough to follow unless you have exactly the make and model of everything that is being used in the article and even then as someone without experience replacing garage door springs the job can be extremely dangerous. With that said, let’s take a look at just why your garage door springs are snapping you late at night or just surprising you by not working when you get home for work.

You’re still asking yourself, why is my garage door spring going to break or why is my garage door spring broken though? The main reason is that your garage door spring is under a lot stress. Day in and day out your garage door spring is taking the weight of your garage door off of the garage door opener and making it easier for you and your garage door opener to open and close it. This means that the garage door springs are lifting quite a few pounds and stretching or expanding to help your garage door open and close a few times a day. This coiling and uncoiling is what your garage door springs are made for but having metal springs under so much tension and stress means that they can only last so long.

If you have some paperwork from your garage door’s installation you will most likely be able to find some information on your garage door springs. Garage door springs because they are under so much tension are usually rated for a number of opening and closing cycles until they eventually break. They may last longer than this number of cycles, but most people really don’t have a way of recording just how many garage door cycles they have gone through because the number is a bit hard to keep track of as it quickly grows into the thousands. 10,000 is usually the minimum rating for your average garage door spring so unless there is more than the usual wear and tear on your garage door spring it should last to around that point with some garage door springs even being rated for more cycles if they are better quality than the average garage door spring, but for the most part 10,000 is a good starting point.

Garage doors go through a lot of opening and closing so if you think that your garage door spring has broken before its time there is a possibility that it may be true, but it is also possible that you underestimate the amount of times your garage door opens and closes on a daily basis. If both of the adults in say a family of four drive to work separately that is a minimum of two cycles a day. Add to that maybe a kid or two who leave for school and come back and that’s one or two more cycles. On top of this are times where you might leave the house and come back aside from just commuting to work which add another few cycles in your average week. These cycles quickly add up to 30 or 40 in your average week meaning that your garage door cycles and the amount of wear and tear put on your garage door springs may in face be more than you thought.

If you still think that your garage door springs have broken before they should have you can ask to see them when they get replaced. Look for things like rust as this can mean that your garage door springs did in fact snap or break before they should have if the break is near the rusted area. This is something that you should definitely worry about because your new garage door springs may fall victim to the same problems if no changes are made. This will mean that you will end up paying for more garage door springs than you should and definitely more than you want to. This problem could be from a problem with your garage door or something as simple as you needing to make sure that you lubricate your garage door springs more often in red to avoid this kind of thing from happening again. The best way to get a good idea of how to avoid this problem in the future is to ask whoever is removing your garage door springs and replacing them what they thing the problem may have been.

Garage door springs make a lot of noise when they snap and break and your garage door will be rendered pretty much useless if and when they do. Knowing why it’s happening and that it’s a pretty normal occurrence that doesn’t mean that you have ruined your garage door and garage door opener though is good for those who worry. Knowing why your garage door springs are likely to break and why they need to be replaced as soon as possible will help you come to terms with the small cost associated with it and can even help you to understand how your garage door works. In this last paragraph I want to reiterate something I mentioned earlier, if you find that your garage door spring is broken and you can’t open the garage door for this reason please do not attempt to replace it yourself. Only one of the garage door springs may have snapped and the job is a dangerous one for those who don’t have any experience doing so.

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