I have a 1958 house. The garage is my shop, and is a 2 car garage with a 30 foot depth. Door is original, and from what I could tell, the springs have been changed only once if ever. One broke two weeks ago and the opener would be way asymmetrical with forces, so I wouldn't use it like it is, anyway, but I only know that it cannot lift the one spring door because that's what clued me in that a spring had broken. I didn't hear it, which is surprising, because the house is not that big and it should've been audible. I had only opened and shut the door just prior to the spring breaking, perhaps an hour prior.
The door is wooden, double width and heavy, and needs pretty sizeable springs - 42 inches long, a pair of them, with 0.26 wire. the springs on the door were pretty close to 1.75" so I replaced them with springs of the same size and have a little bit of fabricating to do as the old mounts and the new are not exactly an ideal match.
But compared to having a garage door guy here to tell my wife that the door needs replacing and there is nothing compatible with the parts that are there without custom fabrication, just doing it proves once again like many other things in the house, a far better idea. And now I understand exactly how all of the parts work, and if the springs get to where they were previously where the door is "men weight" lifting only in a power outage, I will be able to adjust them.
I can see the part where unwinding would be dangerous, especially with stiffer springs like this, but it was not that hard to navigate for someone who is willing to pay attention and think.
the only thing I did that a pro might not do is tape the ends of the winding bars for depth so I could see they were seated with each quarter turn.
Too, this job is complicated a little by the springs being on the outside of the door rather than mounted to the middle, presumably due to the weight of the door, but not sure. The drums also turn the opposite way that most do so i had to think a little harder to make sure everything was lined up right before winding the new springs.
i'm sure some on here have done this, and my prior reservation about how long this would last because the door might need to be replaced if the springs break, it's gone. it's also gone after dealing with several neighbors getting their doors done and telling my wife "they said my door was dangerous" and claiming that the garage guy told them it needs to be addressed while it's operating properly. Both of those are horseshit, and the kind of stuff I don't care for, and you never know if someone has exaggerated what the garage guy told them in general, but I get tired of the common theme now, which is to generate business by telling someone something in their house is unsafe when it's really "at risk of failing" and not in a way that's unsafe.
And I still have a good quality door - for the princely expenditure in total for everything - US made springs, winding bars, and materials to fabricate a better end mount than how things fit at the moment (will redo, the old mounts don't quite fit the new preinstalled cones right) - about $325. I now have a full understanding of how everything works and if the springs need a quarter wind in the future to get back to being near the lift weight of the door, no big deal.
A little unlucky on the cost as I see folks with later lighter doors could have spring sets as low as $100 or $125 even with US origin springs.
Too, the old door saved me money in the past. It's so heavily built that a prior car with a faulty parking break slowly crept down the hill (door is below grade) and came to rest against the door, bulging it in substantially. to our horror. A lightweight metal door would've been crushed. I backed the car away and the door went back to straight with a single lower board showing some stress (I strapped it with angle iron to reinforce it. the same board didn't show any cracking on the outside).
Garage Doors - Torsion Springs
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Re: Garage Doors - Torsion Springs
#2I'm with you on the vendor justifications for paying them oodles of dough - just plain BS. That kind of thing on the part of contractors is the reason I do most of my own repairs, I can do them many times over for the cost of paying the "expert" and after many years I tend to do a better job of it because I want it to last and I'm not rushing to finish today so I don't have to come back tomorrow.
My current house I got on the cheap side because the stucco is failing. It's stucco over insulating concrete forms - styrofoam filled with concrete and rebar. I really like the method, but if you put conventional stucco on it, the stucco starts falling off after a few years. Too heavy and nothing much to which you can fasten stucco net. One of these days, I will re-stucco with the right product, I've spent a long time on research. The original contractor didn't do research, he just did what he knew how to do - conventional stucco.
I've never had a spring break. That's quite the job to take on, but it sounds like you figured it out. I agree on the door solidity - I've seen high winds in this area destroy light duty metal doors, a car would blow right through them.
I did recently have the safety beam on the opener fail - it had been acting up a lot when the sun was shining on it and I figured the installer put the detector on the wrong side. Not the case, turns out that with age the emitter is what fails when the sun shines on it. I don't know why, but I do know that a new pair was $17 on Amazon and it worked. Only had to replace the emitter, it worked with the original detector. It was really tempting to hotwire the electronics at the beam input, but I decided not to, ended up being cheap and easy to do it right.
Re: Garage Doors - Torsion Springs
#3the springs supposedly have a 10-30k cycle lifetime, depending on what you get and how you do things. I'm not sure with how often mine gets opened that it's really relevant, but the garage is little used for parking cars for me and hasn't been for a while. it's a bad bargain in w. PA in the winter because the driveway is on the north side and if it's frozen anywhere, it's frozen on the downhill approach into the garage. it's not hard to start to back out of the garage, and start going sideways toward abrasive stone retaining walls. My wife would like to park in a garage, and brings it up fairly often, but I don't know these days if I want a car in the garage in the first place gassing off stink that is technically sealed off from the house, but the door between the garage and house in the basement gets opened several times a day.
And, I wouldn't have a shop.
I replaced the opener when I first moved in - the springs were probably a little tired, and the opener that was here had nylon gears that wore off. I got a bigger opener because it was cheaper than addressing the door, and now 19 1/2 years later, I'm still using the second opener and glad I didn't call a door guy to come tell me the old door has to go or some nonsense. I could open the door with the tired springs, but the mrs. couldn't. I would guess the deficit at the bottom was maybe 75-100 pounds, but now it is a very small fraction of that.
I get why the garage door guys mention replacing things - it's their job to come up with business whether they're quote guy or a one or couple person shop. Compared to some folks, the honest ones work pretty cheaply, but I noticed just how fast I was inundated with "same day replacement" or "same day fix" advertisements as soon as I started looking up torsion springs.
it's about the same - in terms of drumming up business - as a local painter telling the mrs. that everything in the house should be painted every 7 years because the "paint wears and oxidizes and breaks down". I didn't appreciate that notion, either. If you read articles in home magazines, they'll say the same thing, but they probably are catering to an advertiser or interior designer who wants to be part of a redesign. I'm sure it's possible to have situations where paint is tired in 7 years, but none in this house that's 19 years has received anything but handling wear (paint on doors where people don't grab knobs, the hand marks create a wear mark).
Re: Garage Doors - Torsion Springs
#4
Re: Garage Doors - Torsion Springs
#5trust me - the springs are an easier solution. Not because they are for that guy, but because most of us have limited height and the door is horizontal at the end of its travel.
I haven't seen many garage door setups (or paid attention to them), so I get what that guy's issue is with the doors running up almost vertically.
I thought if I had more room in my garage, it would be interesting to have a counterweight system that was vertical while the door is vertical and then rode a track away from vertical as the door gets horizontal.