A broken spring is the most common reason a garage door won't open — and one of the most dangerous repairs to attempt without training. Our techs carry the most common torsion and extension spring sizes and can usually complete the job within an hour of arrival.
A broken garage door spring is the most common cause of a door that won't open. Springs store a massive amount of energy, and attempting to repair them without proper training and tools is genuinely dangerous — it's one of the leading causes of garage door-related injuries.
Door & Roll technicians are trained in safe spring removal, sizing, and installation. We carry both torsion and extension springs in the most common sizes and can often complete the repair within an hour of arrival. If cables are also damaged, we handle both in the same visit — see our garage door cable repair service.
Torsion springs mount horizontally above the door and are the most common type in modern homes. We replace both springs at once.
Extension springs run along the horizontal tracks. We replace them with safety cables installed to prevent injury if they snap.
The right spring matters — wrong cycle ratings and wire gauges cause premature failure. We size springs precisely.
Guessing here is why so many replacement springs fail inside two years. Every torsion spring we install is specified from the door in front of us.
Measured by laying a rule across 20 tight coils and dividing by twenty. Residential doors in this county run .207, .218, .225, .234, .243, .250, and .262. One step off and the door either refuses to stay on the floor or leans on the opener until the gear gives out.
Usually stamped on the winding cone, otherwise measured directly. Two sizes cover almost every home: 1.75 in. and 2.00 in. Commercial and heavy custom doors move up to 2.625 in.
Coil length with the spring unloaded, cones excluded. On a broken spring we measure both halves and add them, since the break itself consumes roughly a quarter inch.
Right-wound sits on the left of the center bracket, left-wound on the right, and the cones are color-coded red and black. Install a matched pair backwards and they unwind themselves the first time the door opens.
Those four numbers get combined with two more: the weight of the door and the diameter of the cable drums. We put a scale under the door with the opener disengaged and read the actual weight rather than trusting a chart — a 16x7 insulated steel double door usually lands between 180 and 230 lb, and a wood carriage door of the same size can pass 320 lb. Weight and drum size give the inch-pounds per turn the spring has to produce, and that determines the turn count when we wind it. A seven-foot door on standard 400-series drums takes about 7.5 turns; an eight-foot door takes closer to 8.5.
If the cables are frayed or have jumped their drums, they get handled in the same visit rather than becoming a second appointment — our garage door cable repair covers that work. Doors that have been running unbalanced for months usually need a hardware check too, since misaligned rollers and cracked hinges follow bad counterbalance the way rust follows a scratch.
A cycle is one open and one close. Builder-grade springs are rated at 10,000 cycles, which sounds enormous until you count four trips a day and arrive at about seven years. Stepping up to a 25,000-cycle spring means a thicker wire and a longer coil for the same torque, and it typically buys 15 to 17 years. We stock 50,000-cycle sets for households that run the door eight or ten times a day, and the upcharge on a pair is small relative to the extra service life.
Salt air shortens all of those numbers. Black oil-tempered springs installed near the water in Coronado, Ocean Beach, and Imperial Beach pit visibly by year five, and a pitted coil fails at the pit. We install galvanized or powder-coated springs on coastal jobs as standard practice. Inland, in La Mesa and Lakeside, corrosion is rarely the issue — heat cycling and sheer volume of use are what wear springs out there.
Two more things worth saying plainly. We replace springs in pairs on dual-spring doors, because the surviving spring is the same age with the same fatigue history and will follow within months, and because a mismatched pair pulls the door crooked. And extension springs — the ones running alongside the horizontal tracks on older doors — must have a containment cable threaded through them. A snapped extension spring without that cable becomes a projectile. If yours is missing one, we install it whether or not the spring itself needs replacing. For a door stuck right now, our 24-hour emergency line gets a technician out tonight.
You can, and some companies will. The second spring has taken the identical cycle count and is typically within a year of failing, so you pay a second trip charge and a second labor charge shortly after. Replacing the pair costs meaningfully less than two separate visits and keeps the door pulling evenly.
Winding a torsion spring stores several hundred foot-pounds of energy on a bar you are holding at arm's length. Emergency departments see hand and facial injuries from this every year. Beyond the danger, the odds of ordering the correct wire, ID, length, and hand from a listing photo are poor. This is a job for someone with the bars, the scale, and the insurance.
Sixty to ninety minutes for a standard pair on a residential door, including the balance test and re-setting the opener's force and travel limits afterward. Doors with rusted set screws or a seized torsion tube add time.
Pricing depends on cycle rating and door weight. A single torsion spring on a one-car door is the low end; a matched pair on a 16x7 double door costs more. Upgrading from 10,000-cycle to 25,000-cycle springs adds a small amount to the pair and usually doubles the service life, which is the upgrade we recommend most often. You get the flat rate before any work starts.
Only with help and only carefully. With no counterbalance the full 180 to 250 lb lands on whoever is lifting. If you must, use two people, prop the door with a solid support, and never stand under it. Waiting for a technician is the better call, and we run 24 hours for exactly this reason.
Almost always the spring first. Openers are meant to guide a balanced door, not lift a dead one. If the opener has been fighting a weak spring for weeks, though, the gear may already be chewed — we check it during the visit and can handle opener repair at the same time. Keeping both in spec is what an annual tune-up is for.
Operating a door with a broken spring strains your opener and can cause further damage. Call us for same-day service.
