Garage Door Repair – Should You DIY or Hire Professionals?

Garage Door Repair – Should You DIY or Hire Professionals?

This article Garage Door Repair – Should You DIY or Hire Professionals? has been originally published on: http://discountdoorservice.com

If you’re having problems with your garage door, A question that you may be asking yourself is:

Is it safe to repair a garage door yourself?

Don’t let what may seem like a simple door fool you.  If you don’t know what you’re doing and don’t have the proper tools and experience, trying to perform garage door repair yourself can be a big mistake.

You may be thinking, “A garage door just goes up and down… how complicated could it be, right?”  Wrong.  While your garage door may look simple, it actually has hundreds of moving parts and can weigh hundreds of pounds, so if something goes wrong… it can go badly wrong in a hurry.

Add to that the fact that the most common issue when your garage door suddenly won’t open anymore is that there is a broken garage door spring, and you could really be opening up a can of worms as far as trying to do a Do-It-Yourself repair.  And don't just take our word for it because we "sell garage door repair services". Check out what this neutral, 3rd party site, "The Spruce" had to say about it:

When you move into the realm of torsion spring doors, you can cause yourself significant injuries if you’re not paying close attention as you work.

Garage door springs are the “muscle” that lift and lower your door in a controlled manner.  Many people see the garage door opener ‘working’ and mistakenly think that it is doing all the work.  Actually, it is the heavy duty, tightly wound metal garage door springs that do all the heavy lifting.

Think of two equally sized kids on a teeter-totter and you are the “motor” responsible for making them go up and down. Your work is easy as long as there is a kid on either side and they are the same weight.  If one kid gets off, or there is a big size difference between the two, your work will become tiring.

The garage door spring (or springs) get wound up to off-set the weight of the garage door.  If you imagine a door weighing several hundred pounds, you get an idea of how heavy-duty and tightly wound these springs have to be to keep the door balanced, and how much energy are stored in them. You can probably also imagine what would happen if all that energy were to be released unexpectedly or in an uncontrolled manner, with any part of your body nearby.

This kind of danger is why it is not recommended to try to repair garage door springs yourself.

When you have the right springs for your door, your door is ‘balanced’, meaning if you position it half-way between fully opened and fully closed, it should stay right there.  It should not pull itself open and it should not fall to the ground.

What’s more is that it’s not only a question of installing a garage door spring safely and properly, it’s also about installing the proper spring or springs for your specific door.  If you think about it, not all garage doors are the same width or height, and not all are built of the same material. Therefore you can’t expect there to be a single garage door spring to put on your door.

Let’s go back to the teeter-totter example for a moment.  Imagine if you were told that the teeter-totter wasn’t going up and down very easily any more because there was only one kid on one side, and could you please get a replacement kid for the other side to make it work right?  Without knowing what size (weight) kid you needed, there’s very little chance that you would randomly pick the perfectly weighted child to offset the first one.

The same is true for a garage door spring. You need to understand exactly what will be needed to lift the specific door in question, taking in a number of variables.  Then when you understand that springs come in different lengths, made of steel wire of different weights, and that some garage doors need one spring while others need two… you can see that it quickly becomes a challenge to make sure you are getting exactly what you need for your door to be balanced and work properly.

The fact that there are also ‘left wound springs’ and ‘right wound springs’ is something that we won’t even get into here and now, other than to say that if you don’t get those things right, your door will not open and close for you.  So please, make sure you get that part right.

If this is all starting to sound a bit overwhelming, we have good news for you.  There’s no reason for you to go through all the stress, confusion and risk yourself!  Instead, simply give Discount Door Service a call and we’ll have one of our friendly, professional garage door techs come out and take care of it for you, usually within 24 hours of calling us - often within a few hours.

How do I fix my garage door?

So when you consider your options - carefully researching what your specific door needs and how to replace a garage door spring, making sure you order the proper springs and tools to do the job right, making sure you do things in the proper order to make sure everything and everyone remains safe, and hoping upon hope that you get it right the first time… Versus simply calling the professionals at Discount Door Service and having it done by this time tomorrow, safe in the knowledge that it’s been done right…  Is there really a question at all as to which way you should go?

Call Discount Door Service today at (520) 579-9084 - we’re here and ready to help you with all your garage door repairs around Tucson, Oro Valley, Marana and Vail.