Garage Door Springs

Garage door torsion springs made for sectional overhead garage doors can be found mounted on the torsion tube, also known as the axle. The axle can be found horizontally, above the garage door, though in low headroom settings you may see it at the back end of the garage. Torsion springs feature a winding cone on one side and a stationary cone on the other. The winding cone employed by adjusting and deflecting the spring while the stationary cone keeps the spring secured to the center bracket or the spring anchor bracket. As the coil of the spring connects the two cones, the winding cone twists and becomes wound up, which generates the required force needed to support the mass of the garage door.

On the other hand, garage door extension springs in sectional garage door assemblies, they are located above the horizontal tracks. They are deflected and mounted with a wire that slips over the pulley area to the bracket at the bottom. When it comes to single-piece garage door assemblies, the extension springs that are mounted and extended from the side will stick to the hinge of the garage door. While extension springs create linear force through extension, they are made to return the garage door to its original starting position. As the garage door is closed, the energy or resistance is increased while the garage door extends the spring by pulling it. Read more about what type of springs your garage door has.

Necessary Balance

With proper size springs, you should easily be able to manually operate the garage door in both directions. When the door is closed, the springs are resting in their maximum deflected state, which supports the mass of the garage door while keeping the energy levels as is. As the garage door opens again, the energy in the springs will gradually decrease while the springs move back to their natural state.

Imbalanced Garage Door

A garage door spring that is made to support 200 pounds, for instance, installed on a garage door system meant for 500-pound springs, will make it too heavy to properly function. Conversely, garage door springs meant to support 500 pounds installed on a garage door that weigh 200 pounds, will make it pull up. In other words, it will accelerate the direction of the trajectory. In both of these scenarios, it will make the garage door's moving parts experience early wear and tear, premature breaking of the moving parts of the garage door, may cause irregular vibrations and could even cause the garage door to come entirely off of its tracks altogether.

Should You Replace Only the Broken Spring?

Most garage doors have two or more springs installed for operation. As the door moves up and down, every spring turns a single cycle. Because all of the springs achieve the same number of cycles with time, as one spring breaks, the others are soon to follow. While replacing a broken spring, it will be worth it to save you time, money and headaches. For this reason, it is recommended that when a garage door spring breaks, you should replace all of them at the same time.

Garage Door Springs Measurements

There are a lot of things that you should take into account when measuring garage door springs, including the following:

• Length of the spring
• Type of end the spring has
• Inner diameter of the spring
• Diameter of the wire

It is important that you carefully examine each part of the spring and take the necessary time needed to take proper measurements for your garage door spring replacement. Otherwise, you may end up with springs that do not fit, which could cause many obvious and avoidable problems. In most cases, you can determine the type of garage door spring that you will need using designated specialized equipment. Even so, the coil of the spring can become warped or deformed over time, which can affect its performance. Similarly, if you install the wrong size spring, it will cause similar issues.

If this happens, it is important to calculate the attributes of the corresponding system so that you can diagnose the issue and quickly fix it. This includes the height and weight of the garage door itself, the track’s radius, the trajectory distance of the garage door and even the radius of the lift cable drum. All of this must be taken into account when considering the garage door springs size.

With improper garage door springs, you may run into many operation issues that could have been otherwise avoided by taking the time to figure out the correct spring size.