Garage Door Springs

As we approach Spring, we normally point our attention towards……wait for it….”SPRINGS”. 

Believe it or not, this is when your door needs attention.  As your building dries out from the long wet winter, your springs come under increased pressure. Hence, Spring is the season where we get a lot of garage door spring failures.

THE SCIENCE BIT – This is because any corrosion will have progressed during the damp winter.  Springs, in some ways, work like a shatterproof plastic ruler (like the ones we used at school). You would happily spend 20 minutes of your lunch break, bending this poor old ruler back and forth until it broke into two pieces. This is basically classed as stress corrosion and  causes tiny cracks on your garage door springs.  Surface corrosion caused by moisture, pollution and salt then helps to speed up the process. Then, hey presto – your garage door spring breaks. The cracks are tiny and the process takes a while but this is how it happens. Sometimes, if you are vigilant, you can see a small spike of metal sticking out of the spring, so, our advice – get it replaced before anything major happens.

If you are unfortunate enough, your spring can break without warning! It often sounds like a shotgun! This can happen in the middle of the night for no apparent reason or in the middle of opening/closing your door. 

It is not advisable to “No. 8” wire a repair. This can be just as dangerous! Take a look at the recently remove tilt door springs, they now sit happily in our Ghouls and Goblins gallery of horror stories. 

Because of the obvious danger of this, this applies at all times, always: MAKE SURE NOBODY WALKS UNDER THE DOOR WHEN IT IS IN MOTION! 

Doors can break away from the motor and come crashing down! Don’t become a statistic and keep safe.

“DOORS COMING DOWN, DONT BE AROUND”