NO MATTER THE WEATHER - SOUTHWEST GARAGE DOOR IS THERE FOR YOU WHEN YOU NEED US. 24 HOURS A DAY. 7 DAYS A WEEK.

Southwest Garage Door Service is your one stop shop for all things related to your garage door. We repair and service every single brand of garage door and opener under the sun. Our specialities include repairing broken springs, doors that have come off their tracks, door that do not close correctly, and even help you program your remotes! We have a team of skilled technicians that are knowledgable enough to tend to any garage door need you might have and typically within the time of your first consultation! We know you don’t have time to wait around all day for a technician, so we come prepared with all the tools necessary to usually eliminate a second appointment.

We’ve been in this field for a long time and we know firsthand that garage door issues occurs at the least opportune times. We’ve been on the receiving end of those panicked, 4 am phone calls all too many times and we know you can’t wait to enter your home until normal business hours. This is why we offer services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We always have team members on staff who are manning to phones, prepared to send technicians to your house at the drop of a hat. Give us a next call you’re having an inconvenient garage emergency and we’ll take the problem off your plate.

MOST COMMON GARAGE REPAIRS

BROKEN SPRINGS

DOOR OFF TRACK

FAULTY ROLLERS

BROKEN SPRINGS

The garage door spring is what allows your garage door to be lifted with ease. Springs have to be capable of counterbalancing all 200 pounds of your garage doors in order for it to glide up and down optimally. This is why when you lift your garage door by hand, which we never recommend, it feels like it only weighs a couple pounds instead of a couple hundred.

If you lift your garage door and it doesn’t stay put when you let go or it feels like it weighs more than just a few pounds, then your spring is aging and may be on the verge of a break. Never try to address it on your own. Give us a call at any time and we can help you take care of this!

WHAT TYPE OF SPRING DO I HAVE?

Torsion Springs

The most efficient and safest way to raise and lower garage doors. A trained professional will choose the correct torsion spring or springs based on a few variables, and stretch them out to a predetermined length. The torsion springs are then set-screwed into a torsion tube with torsion cables and torsion drums on each side of the garage door to effectively raise both sides of the garage door equally. This method of lifting the door from the bottom of each side at the same rate is the easiest way to raise the garage door manually, and it is also the easiest way for a small motor garage door opener to effortlessly handle such a heavy object. Torsion springs come in many different sizes that lift up various different weights and have various different life cycles. The width of the spring, the gauge of the wire used to make the spring, and the overall length of the spring are all factors in determining what is the EXACT right torsion spring for your garage door. Although there are many different sizes torsion springs can be made into, there are really only two different “types” of ways to make torsion springs for garage doors. One is the traditional low carbon, oil-soaked torsion springs that are made up of 100% pure steel alloys. These are the longer lasting and most commonly used torsion spring. The other type of torsion spring is the galvanized torsion spring. This torsion spring has a zinc coating on it to protect it from oxidation and rusting. Once a torsion spring has rusted too much, it becomes too brittle and dangerous to add any lost tension back to it. This type of torsion spring is ideal only if the garage is storing oxidizing chemicals like chlorine; or if the garage door is open to moisture, such as a car port. Even though the zinc coating is designed to protect the surface of the Torsion Spring, it doesn’t improve its life expectancy. Because zinc is much softer of a material than pure steel alloys, the galvanizing process compromises the integrity of the steel, shortening the torsion springs life-span and its ability to continually lift the full weight of the garage door.

Extension Springs

The types of springs that are installed and function from each side of the garage door just above the horizontal tracks. As the garage door lowers down from the up position, the extension springs begin to stretch out. Once the garage door is completely closed, the extension spring is fully stretched and ready to lift the complete weight of the garage door and its hardware. Just like torsion springs, extension springs come in a vast variety of sizes, color-coded to label its exact lifting capability. If your garage door weighs 200 pounds, then each extension springs should lift up 100 pounds. And just like torsion springs, using the wrong size extension springs will result in damage to your garage door section and garage door opener! Because extension springs lift the garage door from each side separately, even with the correct springs the garage door may travel up and down awkwardly. This too will be trouble for the garage door sections and the garage door opener which are both designed for an easy, unobstructed journey. When one side of the garage door gets just an inch or so higher than the other side of the garage door, the garage door will jerk around or even jam up. This can be resolved, or even prevented by keeping your garage door regularly maintained by a trained professional. Garage doors that operate from extension springs should come equipped with safety cables. Safety cables are attached to the back hangs of the garage door track, and ran through the center of the extension spring to the flag brackets by the header of the garage door. The safety cables sole purpose is to prevent the extension spring from flying through your garage after it breaks. Over half of the garage doors we repair with extension springs DO NOT HAVE SAFTEY CABLES!

CHOOSING THE RIGHT SPRING

Choosing the correct spring, or springs, for a garage door is imperative. It is an exact science. Knowing the size and complete weight of the garage door is necessary; but other factors, as well, help in determining the overall width and length of spring needed. Also, did the builder use short cuts? A vast majority of home builders will cut costs by using one torsion spring that lifts 160 pounds versus two torsion springs that lift 80 pounds apiece. As the single torsion spring system raises and lowers the garage door it pulls the door in the opposite direction of the spring and also forces the cable drum to push itself into the opposite endplate of the garage door creating a jerky, less unobstructed journey for the garage door opener to operate. The two torsion spring system avoids this awkward motion because one spring is wound to the left, and the other spring to the right. When the garage door travels up and down it stays centered and the cable drums don’t move against the endplates, freeing the unnecessary stress to the garage door opener. This, and because the two torsion spring system collectively holds 160 pounds better and longer than the one torsion spring system, is why it will greatly extend the life expectancy of the garage door opener. And because the garage door opener is working less, the force adjustments on it can be set up to be more sensitive, therefore making it MORE SAFE! But still, the biggest disadvantage for a one torsion spring system versus a two torsion spring system is when you only have one torsion spring on your garage door and it breaks, the torsion cables fall and the garage door is stuck down, with your car trapped in or out. The garage door will be too heavy to lift for the garage door opener, and too heavy to lift for most human beings too. This is one of the reasons we offer 24-hour service 7 days a week. Our technicians carry a wide variety of torsion and extension springs on their trucks to make sure we have what you need, when you need it. Sometimes the torsion spring will break as the garage door is traveling up or down and the door will slam to the ground crushing anything in its path. This can be avoided with a two torsion spring system. If your garage door uses a two torsion spring system to lift the collective weight; then when one spring breaks, the other spring will still hold the torsion cables tight around the torsion drums and the garage door opener can usually still raise and lower the garage door. The second spring is still helping by lifting half of the weight. Two springs generally come with a longer warranty because two torsion springs sharing the weight of the garage door will, in theory, have a longer life expectancy then one torsion spring lifting all of the weight. If your garage door already has two torsion springs, and one spring is broken, it is recommended to replace both of them at the same time. The other spring was most likely installed at the same time as the broken spring, and is therefore the same age and has turned the same amount of times. If only one spring is replaced, the other spring will likely break as it is being re-balanced; and if not, it will most certainly break within a month or two. Then, the tension of the first new spring will need to be released to add the second new spring, and will then decrease the life expectancy of the first new spring.

The size and width of the coil, along with the complete length of the torsion spring not only determines how much weight the spring will lift, but also how many times it will do it. For example, a torsion spring that is two inches thick and made with a .207 width coil that is twenty-two inches long will open and close an eighty pound, 7’ tall garage door approximately 10,000 times; whereas a torsion spring that is two inches thick and made with a .218 width coil that is twenty-eight inches long will open and close an eighty pound, 7’ high garage door 20,000 times. Our garage door repair technicians carry a wide arrange of widths, and lengths to provide our customers with multiple warranty options.

WHY DO SPRINGS BREAK?

General Wear & Tear

General use and wear over time is the most common reason for a spring break. An average garage door is opened and closed 3,000 times a year while most only support 10,000 cycles over their entire lifetime! If you’ve had your garage door for 3+ years, there’s a good chance your springs are worn.

Rust & Corrosion

Rust is caused by stored chemicals and outside moisture that eventually lead to the deterioration of your garage door springs. This is common, but it can shorten the lifespan of your springs by gradually corroding the metal and causing more friction between the coils. Help prevent rust with our regular maintenance and lubrication! See our section on Safety Inspections

Insufficient Maintenance

An inevitable phase in the life cycle of a spring is for it to ultimately break. You can’t avoid it, but you can prolong the life span by implementing regular maintenance and safety checks. We can let you know when your springs are preparing for their big break so you can avoid it happening at an inconvenient, or possibly dangers, time. Check out our section on Safety Checks.

Cost Cutting

It isn’t uncommon for builders and contractors to cut corners and install an extended 1-spring system instead of the recommended 2-spring system. A cheaper solution may seem like a good idea the time, but in the long run you will be spending more with a substantially shorter spring lifespan. Similarly, replacing just one spring at a time may seem like a budgetary solution, but we can guarantee the other spring will break shortly thereafter. Go ahead and change them both so they can be synchronized.

I’ll just DIY it!

We cannot state clearly enough that this is a bad idea! The National Safety Council, ALL door manufactures, and the tens of thousands of injured “do-it-yourselfers” agree that preparing a spring by stretching it out enough to lift hundreds of pounds should be done by a professional.

DOOR OFF TRACK

If one side of your garage door is slightly more raised than the other, is going up and down roughly, or is simply jammed and not moving at all – then most likely one of the garage door cables has come undone from the garage door drum. This causes the spring to be able to only lift one side, which in turn causes the tracks to get bent and send the rollers out of line.

This garage door repair is extremely dangerous. Let us do it for you! Because a cable can come off of the drum at any time of the day or night, we offer 24-hour service 7 days a week so your garage door doesn’t have to remain in an unsafe position, compromising the security of your garage and home. Having your garage door tuned up and tension regularly added back to the springs is recommended in keeping the cable tight around the drum and reducing the likelihood of a cable coming off and the door coming off track.

WHY IS MY GARAGE DOOR OFF TRACK?

Tracks Are Bent

The tracks will likely be damaged after a cable comes off because the garage door is forced to sit crookedly against them and the track has no choice but to bend outward. But sometimes, pre-existing bends in the track are the reason for the cable comes undone in the first place. Over many usages, especially with stripped metal rollers, a garage door track can become so fatigued that it may bend enough to open itself up wide enough for the rollers to come out on their own. The will cause the garage door to jam up on one side, which in turn causes the cable to come off.

Bad Rollers

Cheap nylon no ball-bearing rollers are the to for a majority of garage door problems; especially when a cable comes off. Old, stripped out ball-bearing rollers that are locked up and scratching can also be a dangerous drag on the garage. Again, when one side of the garage door is sticking worse than the other side, the cable will soon come out of its designed groove on the drum, and eventually off of the entire drum. This preventable issue is usually preceded by the squealing, whining sounds of friction that is also wearing on your garage door opener.

Not Enough Spring Tension

After the first year of installation, a new spring can lose up to 40 percent of its original torque. Without the correct amount of tension on the springs, not only does the remaining weight of the garage door begin to stress the garage door opener, but the garage door cables will not be held tight enough onto the drums. Usually with the garage door open, on one side or the other, when there isn’t enough tension on the springs there will be slack on the cable going around the drum. Soon the cable will inevitably come off the drum, which then causes the springs to only be lifting the other side of the garage door. This can result in a jammed garage door or even worse. The National Safety Council recommends having tension added back to your springs once a year. This may or may not be necessary throughout the life of your garage door spring, but is usually always necessary after the first year of their usage. You can always check the “balance” of your springs by pulling the red emergency release cord to your opener and lifting the garage door manually up around two or three feet from the ground. If gravity pulls the door back down or it feels heavy (even 15 pounds heavy), then it is because the springs have lost torque and need tension added back to them by a trained professional.

Hitting Something

One of the main reasons we stay available to serve our customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, is because accidents happen. And they rarely happen during convenient business hours. Keeping objects like brooms, rakes, wood, or anything of the like, next to the vertical track of your garage door is not a good idea. If the sensitivity adjustments inside your garage door opener aren’t adjusted perfectly to the feel of your garage door and your door hits something; the motor will push the other side of the garage door down just enough to allow the cable to come off, knocking the door off track. Another obstacle that tends to get into fights with garage door is hatchbacks of SUVS. Forgetting to close the hatch after unloading groceries and then pushing the garage door opener wall button is an easy mistake to make. Lots of people do this! One way to protect your garage door, opener, cars, pets, and kiddos is to schedule a tune up and safety check with us. We will get your garage door working smoothly enough to be able to set your garage door opener up to be sensitive enough to reverse when it accidentally hits something.

FAULTY ROLLERS

Rollers are the “wheels” of the garage door. They are what allows each garage door section to roll along the track. Most standard garage doors are held onto the track by eight to twelve rollers loosely sleeved within roller hinges. Most standard rollers are 2 inches wide and designed to fit in the majority of standard tracks. Roller stems vary in length, but most are 4 inches long or 7 inches long. The 7 inch “long-stem” roller are common for heavier doors because they give better leverage and are less likely to slide out of the roller hinge sleeve. But most standard garage doors come with the 4-inch stem. There are five commonly used rollers installed on garage doors, which can lend itself to a variety of different roller issues.

WHICH ROLLERS DO I NEED?

Plastic Rollers

Plastic rollers are to blame for over two-thirds of garage door and garage door opener issues. Unlike all other rollers, plastic rollers do not have any ball bearings inside them to aid in rolling. A majority of builders use these friction creating rollers because of they are inexpensive. When a garage door opener initially attempts to lift the door, everything except the stuck plastic rollers wants to go up. Over time this causes the nuts, bolts, screws, and rivets to strip and come loose. The garage door hinges then begin to separate from the garage door sections creating many door and opener issues. Most garage door openers are built with some sort of plastic self-destructing mechanism that will strip or break if there is stress from the garage door, like dragging rollers, to protect the opener’s small motor. Plastic rollers are ‘born bad’ and therefore are never operating effectively, but cold weather tends to make them work even worse. When one or two rollers begin to freeze up on one side of the garage door more than the other side, the results could be allowing the spring cable to come undone from the cable drum and the springs will only be lifting one side of the garage door. This creates a dangerous situation! Garage doors using plastic rollers will become loud, and the struggle being implemented on the garage door opener will make it loud as well. This noise is stress and needs to be addressed!

7 Ball Bearing Metal Rollers

The 7 ball bearing metal roller is the generic, hardware store style roller used primarily by people who replace their own rollers or by builders who want to claim the garage door is operated by metal rollers, but want to cut costs. As implied, this metal roller has seven ball bearings inside the wheel to help it spin when moving the weight of the garage door. But unlike all other metal rollers, the generic seven ball bearing roller doesn’t have the weight supporting bushing that keeps the wheel from pivoting. The seven ball bearing roller can only hold a maximum load of 35 pounds and usually within 1,500 cycles, around 1 year, the weight of the garage door will cause the seven ball bearing roller to wobble back and forth. This can be unsafe because the rollers could pop themselves off track. Even before the rollers wobble themselves off track, they create a loud noise because they will no longer be rolling properly. This scratching along the tracks begins to have the same emergency brake effect that plastic rollers have on your garage door opener, except now there is the threat of the garage door coming off track and onto your car as well. Keeping this type of roller lubricated every month will help extend its life-expectancy. However, if your garage door is over eight feet wide we strongly recommend spending a little more to get a much safer, longer lasting roller to replace those builder model plastic rollers.

10 Ball Bearing Metal Rollers

Most quality garage doors come with metal rollers that have 10 ball bearings grouped around a metal bushing that keeps the roller weight resistant for up to seventy-five pounds or 15,000 cycles. Unlike the 7 ball bearing roller, these rollers do not pivot when the weight of the garage door sections push on them. Like all ball bearing rollers, these need to be kept lubricated or they will strip out and not last their full life-expectancy. Even when properly lubricated, these too will begin to get loud from metal scratching against metal. Most of the time, this noise is the rollers locking up and creating stress on the garage door opener. Once the ball bearings strip out inside the garage door rollers and the door begins riding rough, the cables will likely come off of the cable drums and then only one side of the garage door will be lifted by the springs. This usually results in the top section of the garage door coming out of the track and likely pulling the entire door onto your vehicle; or at least jamming the garage door into a position that cannot be safely moved. Keep these rollers lubricated!

11 Ball Bearing Nylon Rollers

The 11 ball bearing nylon roller is an upgrade to any garage door with metal or plastic rollers. These preferred rollers have an extra steel bearing to make a better fit within the track, a zinc plated stem for extra oxidizing protection from rust, and a long-wearing nylon tire that will keep your garage door quiet for over 15,000 cycles. These “stealth wheels” are a nice compliment to any garage door operated by a belt-drive operator because they contribute to the purpose of quieter operation by not becoming a strain on the small motor. Even if your garage door is operated by a chain or screw drive unit, the 11 ball bearing nylon roller will usually increase its life-expectancy because of the rollers’ free-flowing nature. Because it glides easier with the nylon rollers, the door itself will generally last longer because the screws holding the hinges onto the thin, gauged garage door sections won’t be so vigorously pulled loose by being locked inside the track by rough riding rollers. The difference between an 11 ball bearing nylon roller and a plastic or metal roller is night and day. If you desire the most safe and sound garage door for your home, then an upgrade to nylon ball bearing rollers might be all you need.

11 Ball Bearing Sealed Precision Nylon Rollers

The 11 ball bearing sealed precision nylon roller is the best of the best. These rollers can hold up to a 100-lb each for over 100,000 cycles. The ball-bearings in this type of roller are sealed within the wheel so that moisture and oxidizing chemicals cannot warp them, thus preventing them from stripping. Sealed rollers are ideal for car-wash garage doors, but also serve to protect garage doors installed on carports and/or near swimming pools. If your garage door is in the vicinity of a swimming pool or stored chlorine, a sealed roller can help prevent the oxidation of the ball bearings within the roller wheel. Oxidizing chemicals strip away all the lubrications in your garage and create rust, decreasing the strength and life-expectancy of the garage door springs and restricting the free-flowing rolling function of the door’s rollers. Even chlorine containers with a closed lid will still leak oxidizing fumes that will rust everything metal in your garage! Keep chlorine, shock, and even paint chemicals outside or in a sealed non-metal storage container. If your washer and dryer are located in your garage, sealed rollers will prevent the escaping moisture from entering and rusting the wheels’ ball bearings. Another good reason to upgrade you garage door to sealed nylon rollers is if you own a particularly heavy garage door; such as a wooden one. Wooden garage doors are much heavier than metal doors. When a wood door is in the up position, the weight being placed on the roller could be over 500 pounds. This weight is better supported by a sealed roller. Some double steel insulated garage doors can also be a mighty heavy load for any inferior rollers and could be best served and protected by the 100lb rated sealed rollers!

DANGERS IN REPLACING YOUR OWN ROLLERS

Maybe you’re selling your house and you just want to get your garage door moving again without paying someone to do it for you. The wear and tear that hardware store rollers will do to the door and opener will not affect you, as long as they work until the house is sold. This rarely goes off without a hitch, right?

First, and foremost, changing out the bottom roller of any garage door is the leading cause of most garage door injuries. All of the springs’ tension is attached to the bottom bracket that the roller is connected to. Messing around with this bracket is a quick way to lose your fingers. Just like the severe injuries that happen when springs break without warning while being stretched, a spring will rip a loose bottom bracket up faster than you can even see it happen, and chances are parts of your hand will rip up with it.

Having your rollers replaced by a professional is a lot less expensive than a hospital bill. Also, passing inspection is the main reason someone selling their home might even consider changing their rollers. If the garage door opener does not reverse when the garage door hits something as it is going down, the garage door opener will not pass a home inspection. Replacing the bad rollers with plastic or 7 ball-bearing metal rollers will most likely not improve the opener’s ability to reverse upon contact either. If you decrease the force setting on the operator to make it more sensitive in order to pass inspection, then the opener will be too sensitive to ignore the dragging or scratching of the inferior rollers and will take several attempts to finally get the garage door to close. The operation of the garage door will become inconsistent and frustrating, and will demand a better solution.

OTHER COMMON SERVICES

Here are several other reasons people use Southwest Garage Door Services.

COMMERCIAL

Southwest Garage Door Service is able to offer repairs, maintenance and installation on a number of commercial and industrial door needs. Our certified technicians are trained to install and service doors for all types of budgets and business types.

GATES

At Southwest Garage Door Service, we know that security is a high-priority when it comes to protecting your home. That’s why we go the extra-mile to offer gate installation and services to give your home additional protection and to give you a peace of mind.

BENT SECTIONS/PANELS

It doesn’t take much to bend the metal of most garage door sections. Whether the door was bumped by a car or the opener was activated with the manual door lock engaged, sections will bend. After they have been bent, they will get progressively worse. If the center of the garage door has been damaged, maybe from years of operating with plastic rollers, and the door is in the up position, gravity will pull down at the bending sections; eventually causing it to make a noticeable tear from the outside. Gradually, when the operator is pushing the garage door down, the buckling of the bent sections will either fold your door in half over your vehicles or, hopefully, trigger your garage door opener’s safety reversal system, preventing it from continuing to push downward.

If your garage door was installed before 2006, there is a good chance that the sections made today will not match exactly. No worries! Ninety-Five percent of damaged sections can be repaired by our experienced garage door ”chiropractors.” If you call us before it begins to tear, we can get it looking perfect or pretty dang close! And with our special tricks of the trade, the damage will not continue to be an issue. Sometimes, if the garage door damage is severe enough, we install a support strut across the length of the injured section to reinforce it permanently. If the opener arm has bent or ripped the metal style which attaches it to the garage door, we repair this too by installing a much thicker gauged metal opener reindforcment bracket. Whether we are massaging out bends or reinforcing the damaged section with extra weight, getting the garage door to roll smoothly will be imperative to the longevity of the repair. Any stress in the operation of the garage door will be mostly distributed at the injured location. A reinforcement support strut can weigh up to fifteen pounds, so tension will need to be added to the springs by a professional to compensate for the added weight because the motor in the garage door opener shouldn’t lift more than eight pounds.

BROKEN OR FRAYING CABLES

Garage door cables are made from galvanized aircraft cables and don’t usually break unless they have been rubbing on something for some time. Once a cable begins fraying on one side of the garage door, it lengthens more than its matching cable on the other side of the door, resulting in the undamaged cable side rising up and leaving a gap under the other side. This allows for leaves and critters to enter your garage and eventually creates a jam as the door travels unevenly.

Sometimes when a spring breaks the force of the escaping tension can be enough to break a cable in half! When one cable is fraying or broken, it is necessary for a professional technician to replace both cables so that they are the exact same length. On garage doors that have extension springs, if a cable breaks it could send the extension spring flying through the air like a giant, metal rubber band with enough force to go through a wall!

SAFETY CABLES

If your garage door functions from an extension spring system, then it is important to have safety cables installed with the springs to protect anything or anyone that may be in the garage when the springs break. A safety cable is tied up to the same back hang that the spring is connected to. It is installed through the springs to the header end of the horizontal tracks. In the future, when the spring breaks, it will not be able to fling through the air because the aircraft cable running through it will not allow it go anywhere.

EXTENSION SPRING PULLEYS

The cables on extension spring garage doors operate on a pulley system. These pulleys usually have ball bearings within that allows them to roll as the garage door travels up and down. Over time, even with proper lubrication, the ball bearings within the pulleys will strip out and not allow the garage door to function correctly. Even if just one of the four pulleys operating the garage door is bad, the whole door will jerk around as it goes up and down. This shaking will inevitably damage the door and certainly decrease the life expectancy of the garage door operator and its plastic parts. Our preventative maintenance tune-up and safety checks include the proper ball bearing grease packing necessary to get the longest life out of your pulleys, also extending the life of your garage door and opener.

END BEARINGS & CENTER BEARINGS

Every torsion spring system operates in an obvious enough way – a torsion spring set screwed into a torsion tube that has torsion drums at each end that has the torsion cable fastened to the bottom ends of the garage door clipped into it. The torsion tube is mounted to the header of the garage door opening by a center plate and endplates. These plates have a bearing installed inside them that is the perfect diameter for holding the tube to the plate. Most end and center bearings are manufactured with ball bearings inside them that to allow the torsion tube to turn freely when the spring is moving the garage door up and down. In an effort to cut costs wherever they can, builders may use plastic bearings within the endplates that have no ball bearings inside them. Over time, these plastic bearings begin to squeal, and they don’t allow the tube to turn as freely, creating a rougher travel for the garage door as it goes up and down. This in turn causes stress on the garage door sections as the operator struggles to pull the door up and push it down. It is a good idea to replace the bearings, especially the plastic ones, every time the springs are replaced. We also recommend keeping the end and center bearings of your garage door torsion spring system lubricated with the proper grease.

HINGES

Hinges used to attach garage door sections come in a variety of sizes and gauges. Many builders, and/or cheap garage door companies will install 18-gauge narrow body hinges. These thinnest gauge hinges that exist used in an effort to increase their profit margins. Once the springs begin to lose some tension, especially with plastic or stripped out rollers, gravity will try to hold the door down as the opener struggles to lift it up. This causes the thin, cheap hinges to easily tear and create major issues for both the door and opener. Whenever we install a new hinge or replace a broken one, we always install a much thicker 11-gauge wide body commercial hinge.

Hinges are not universal. They are number-identified to specify its location on the garage door. A lot of garage door manufactures design their own brand specific hinges for a variety of reasons; cost, safety, and even the size may be manufactured to fit in its allotted space.

If your garage door is a cedar overlay (a door with wood covering the exterior) then we recommend a double hinge system. A double hinge system uses two hinges side-by-side that together houses a long stem roller. This adds much more support for holding up the significantly heavier garage door.

BOTTOM BRACKETS

Whether your garage door operates on an extension or a torsion spring system, the cables lift the door from the bottom ends of the bottom section. This is fastened to a bottom bracket that is mounted to the bottom corner of the bottom section. Most bottom brackets have a Milford pin protruding out of it, designed to be the perfect size to securely hold the loop end of a cable. Cables that are not bought from doors manufacturers tend to have too wide of a loop and, as the springs lose tension, the cable gets too much slack on it, making it easy to walk the cable off of the bottom bracket pin. This causes the springs to only be lifting the other side of the door, creating a jam. Over time, due to shifting and everyday use, the metal bottom brackets could begin rubbing against the metal tracks, causing the brackets to break and the garage door to only raise from one side. This could be avoided by scheduling a preventative maintenance tune-up and safety check.

BENT TRACKS

The metal guides that hold the garage door in place and that the rollers slide through are called the tracks. Garage door tracks are generally separated into two parts; the straight up and down vertical track and the curved horizontal track, which holds the door up in the air. There are many ways garage door tracks can be bent; bad rollers, bad driving, the spring cable came off and raised the door on one pushing it off the track. Whatever the cause of the bent track, a bend in it will not allow the rollers to properly move through its route. The results of this could be tearing of the metal sections of the garage door, forcing of the rollers off the track, knocking the cable off the drum, and of course shortening the life expectancy of the garage door opener by making it work too hard. A vast majority of the time, we can repair your existing tracks with our special track anvil straightening tools. Our preventative maintenance tune up and safety checks include tightening all the track’s nuts and bolts, making any necessary track adjustments, and straightening any repairable bends within the tracks.

BOTTOM WEATHER SEAL

Along the bottom of most residential garage doors is a flexible vinyl seal that is used to help keep leaves and critters out of your garage and protects the metal bottom section from rusting. Most of these seals are produced from virgin, low temperature vinyl compounds to ensure superior sealing and memory retention and to maintain its shape and ability to seal even at subzero temperatures. Our long-wearing, flexible PVC replacement seals have a T-heel at each end that slides perfectly through most garage door retainers. If your garage door retainer (the aluminum track that is installed along of the bottom section) isn’t compatible with the superior sealing T-heel bottom seal, we carry replacement retainers that are compatible with them. Bottom seal comes in gray or black and also in different lengths depending your garage door floor and foundation. Most replacement seals sold to consumers are 2” long and can leave slivers of light peeping through the bottom of the door, but we carry 3.5” long seal that makes up for any imperfections in the garage door floor. If your house has some serious foundation issues, we also carry a 4.5” and 6” long seal to cover up those gaps. Over time the bottom seal of your garage door will begin to erode from weather or hungry rodents, but most bottom seals need replacement due to improper installation. Even though the seal is designed to be protected from cold temperatures, it will begin to shrink due to hot temperatures. Most installers will simply cut the ends of the bottom seal to the appropriate length of the garage door, which allows it to easily shrink by inches every year. The trick of the trade in installing bottom seal is to leave a couple inches on each side to be tucked into itself, making it impossible to shrink.

PERIMETER/JAMB SEAL

On the outside of each garage door is usually some kind of trim around the frame of the opening that seals the sides and top of the door. The most efficient and attractive way of doing this is with a SureSeal PVC made weatherseal installed around the perimeter of the garage door opening. This type of jamb seal is much more durable and flexible than regular wood trim boards and will not crack in the heat or cold. SureSeal weatherseal boards are made of PVC and have a rigid vinyl strip that seals against the garage door to help keep the temperature in your garage more consistent. Weatherseal, or perimeter seal, comes with a wood grain finish and either white, brown, almond, or sandstone to match your door. It can also be easily painted to match a painted garage door.

EXTERNAL HARDWARE

If you would like your garage door to have a carriage house look and perhaps match your entry door with the same accessories, we carry a wide selection of traditional and rustic hardware.