Spring just broke? Call now and tell us what the door is doing.
✆ Call 845-535-1141If your garage door spring has just broken: stop pressing the opener button and do not try to lift the door. The spring is what carries the door's weight. Without it, the opener and anyone lifting by hand are moving the full weight of the door, and it can drop. Leave it closed if it is closed, keep people clear, and call 845-535-1141.
How to Tell the Spring Is Broken
- A loud bang from the garage, often when nobody was near the door.
- A gap in the coil. On the steel bar above the closed door, a broken torsion spring shows a clear space of an inch or two where the coil has separated.
- The door lifts a few inches and stops, or the opener hums and reverses.
- The door is suddenly very heavy by hand, or came down hard.
- A cable is slack or hanging, or the door sits crooked. A broken spring often takes the cable tension with it.
- With side-mounted (extension) springs, one spring is visibly loose, stretched or dangling beside the track.
What Is Safe to Do, and What Is Not
| Situation | What to do |
|---|---|
| Door closed, car outside | Leave it closed. A closed door with a broken spring is stable. Call during our service hours. |
| Door closed, car trapped inside | Call and say a car is trapped. Do not pull the red release and try to lift a full-weight door alone. |
| Door stuck open | Keep everyone out from under it and do not pull the red release cord: with no spring, the door can fall. Lock the door between the garage and the house, and call. |
| Opener still seems to move the door | Stop. Running an opener against a door with no spring strips its gears and can burn out the motor. |
Do not loosen, unwind or remove a spring, and do not touch the cables, the drums at the ends of the spring bar or the brackets at the bottom corners of the door. Those parts hold the stored force that causes serious injuries.
How the Repair Works
- Identify the spring. Springs are matched to the weight and height of the door: wire size, inside diameter and length all matter. The door is weighed or the old spring is measured.
- Replace the spring, usually both. On a two-spring door, both have done the same number of cycles. Replacing them together keeps the door balanced and avoids a second failure soon after.
- Check what the break affected. Cables, drums, bearings and the centre bracket are inspected, because a spring failure often frays a cable or shifts a drum.
- Balance the door. A correctly sprung door stays where you leave it when lifted halfway by hand.
- Reconnect and test the opener, including its travel limits and safety reverse.
Why Springs Break
Springs wear out by use, not by age. Each opening and closing is one cycle, and a spring is rated for a set number of them. A household that uses the garage as its main door reaches that number years sooner than one that uses it twice a day. Cold weather makes worn spring steel more brittle, which is why so many break on the first hard freezes of winter. Rust and a lack of lubrication shorten spring life further. More detail: how long garage door springs last.
Torsion and Extension Springs
- Torsion springs sit on a bar above the door and twist to lift it. Most modern doors use one or two.
- Extension springs run beside the horizontal tracks and stretch as the door closes. They should have a safety cable through the middle; if yours do not, ask to have them added when the springs are replaced.
Full details on spring types, materials and cycle ratings are on our garage door spring replacement page.
Related Guides
- Broken garage door spring: what to do
- Spring broke overnight: what to do
- Signs a spring is about to break
- Urgent garage door repair
Frequently Asked Questions
Where and When We Work
We are open Sunday to Thursday 7 AM to 11 PM, and Friday 7 AM to 1 PM (closed Saturday). In Rockland County that includes Monsey, Spring Valley, Suffern, New City, Nanuet and the surrounding communities, and we also serve Orange, Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Ulster and Sullivan counties. Call 845-535-1141 to confirm availability for your address.