Bringing Balance To Your Garage Door
Posted on: 8 March 2017
Whether you're headed out or coming back home after a long day, the last thing you want to deal with is a stuck garage door. While there are many reasons why your garage door can suddenly become hard to open or close, balancing issues are usually to blame. An out-of-balance garage door can lead to other problems if it's not taken care of soon enough.
Why Balance Is So Important
A typical garage door is a lot heavier than you'd think, with most garage doors weighing in at around 240 to 250 pounds. Lifting and lowering that much weight takes a lot of muscle, which is why garage door manufacturers rely on extension and torsion springs to help counterbalance that weight. These garage door springs make it much easier for human beings to open and close the garage doors manually, plus it also takes a tremendous amount of strain off of automatic garage door openers.
A garage door can fall out of balance as the garage door springs wear down with time and usage. On a garage door that relies on two extension springs, a spring on one side may wear out faster than the other. This not only makes the door feel heavier, but it can also open and close crookedly. Worn-out springs can also cause the door to close much harder than usual.
How to Balance Your Garage Door
To prevent the above problems from happening, it's important to test your garage door's balance on a regular basis. Here's a simple way you can safely test its balance:
- Disconnect the garage door from the garage door opener by pulling the emergency release cable located overhead.
- With the garage door opener disconnected, manually raise the garage door until the door reaches its halfway point.
- Make sure the garage door opens as straight as possible - if it gets hung up on one side, it means one of the springs are weak and needs replacement.
- With the garage door halfway open, let go of the door and watch how it behaves. If it remains in place, it means the garage door is perfectly balanced. If the garage door drops shut, then the tension on the garage door spring needs to be adjusted or the springs need to be replaced altogether.
After checking your garage door's balance, you can take important steps to repair the problem and prevent it from happening in the near future. This usually involves adding or reducing tension on the garage door springs until they're properly balanced. Springs that are too old or too weak to be adjusted must be replaced in order to restore the garage door's functionality. Contact a company like Garage Doors Of Naples Inc to learn more.
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