Your garage door springs are the only reason a 300 pound door feels light. The opener does not lift the door. The springs do, and the opener just guides them. When a spring goes, the door becomes dead weight in an instant.
The number that decides everything: cycles
Springs are not rated in years. They are rated in cycles. One cycle is the door going up once and coming down once.
The industry standard spring carries a 10,000 cycle rating. That sounds like a lot until you count how often the door actually moves. The average household opens and closes a garage door about four times a day. Do the arithmetic and 10,000 cycles lands at roughly seven years.
| How often you use it | Cycles per year | A 10,000 cycle spring lasts |
|---|---|---|
| Twice a day | 730 | About 13 years |
| Four times a day (typical) | 1,460 | About 7 years |
| Six times a day | 2,190 | About 4.5 years |
| Eight times a day | 2,920 | About 3.5 years |
If the garage is how your household enters the house rather than the front door, you are in the bottom two rows. Teenagers, two working adults, and a dog walk at lunchtime add up faster than people expect.
Work out where yours sits, right now
- Find the door's age. Many doors carry a manufacturer sticker on the inside of a panel, often near a bottom corner, with a date. If the door is original to the house, use the year the house was built.
- Count your daily openings honestly. Include every trip. Most people undercount.
- Multiply. Daily openings times 365 times the years since the door went in.
- Compare against 10,000. Past it and still on the original springs? You are running on borrowed time.
If your springs are original and you are past the cycle count, it is no longer a question of whether one breaks. It is a question of whether it breaks while your car is inside.
What shortens the life
Cycle ratings assume clean, dry, ordinary conditions. Real garages are not always that.
- Corrosion. The biggest one near the coast. Salt air pits the steel, and a pitted coil fails well short of its rating. If you are in a beach community, assume less than the sticker says.
- No lubrication. Dry coils grind against each other on every cycle.
- A door out of balance. If the door is heavy on one side, one spring is doing more than its share and will fail first.
- Undersized springs. A spring that is close but not correct for the door weight runs at the edge of its range constantly. This is common on doors where someone chose the cheapest part rather than the right one.
- An added insulation kit. Insulating an uninsulated door adds weight. If nobody re-sized the springs afterwards, they have been overloaded ever since.
The warning signs that come before the bang
Springs usually give you notice. Most people miss it because the changes are gradual.
- The door has become slow to lift. Especially noticeable on the first cycle of a cold morning, when steel contracts and a fatigued spring loses what margin it had left.
- It will not hold position halfway up. Disconnect the opener with the red release handle and lift the door to waist height by hand. A balanced door stays put. A door that drifts down or shoots up has a spring problem already.
- Visible gaps in the coil. Look at the spring on the bar above the opening. It should be a continuous, tight coil.
- Rust or flaking along the coils.
- The opener strains and the motor sounds like it is working harder than it used to.
The sound you cannot miss
A breaking torsion spring makes a bang like a gunshot, loud enough that people call the police thinking someone shot at the house. If you heard that and the door will not lift now, stop using the door and read this. Do not run the opener and do not try to lift it by hand.
High cycle springs, and when they pay off
Springs rated above the 10,000 standard exist. Common upgrades run 25,000 to 50,000 cycles, which can be four or five times the life of a standard spring.
They cost more up front. They make sense when:
- The garage is your main entrance and the door runs six or more times a day
- You plan to stay in the house long enough to reach a second replacement
- The door is heavy, whether wood, insulated, or double width
- Access is awkward, so the labour on any future visit is high
For a door that runs twice a day in a house you may sell in five years, standard springs are the sensible choice. We will tell you which situation you are in rather than defaulting to the more expensive part.
Why we quote both springs
This is the question we get asked most, and it is a fair one. Only one broke, so why pay for two?
Both springs were installed on the same day. Both have run exactly the same number of cycles. The one still holding is not in good condition, it is simply the one that has not let go yet. In our experience the second follows the first within months.
Two springs in one visit costs less than this visit plus another call-out shortly after, and it puts the door back in balance properly. We will replace only one if you want that. We will tell you the odds first.
The one thing not to do yourself
A wound torsion spring stores an enormous amount of energy. Winding bars slip. This job has the worst injury record in the trade, and every experienced technician knows someone it happened to.
We are glad to explain how the system works and what we are doing while we do it. We will not hand you the winding bars.
Think your springs are near the end? Run the balance test above. If the door will not hold position halfway up, call or text us and describe what it does. We can usually tell you what you are looking at before we drive out, and the estimate on site is free.