Garage doors are
easily the biggest movable part of your house and with children, pets, and
Houston’s humid climate, potential floods, tornadoes and even hurricanes, it
can be easy to see how they get damaged. In this article we’ll go over some
common garage door problems, if you can mend them on your own or if you need
assistance.
Visually
Inspect Your Door
The best way to
repair your door is prevention. As the saying goes ‘prevention is better than
cure’, and when it comes to your house, there is no better way to go about
things. Every season you should carefully inspect the tracks, rollers and other
moving parts of your door. Test out lifting and closing your garage door and
watch it to see if it’s smooth, jerky or shows any other problems.
Seasonal Maintenance
Most of the
problems a garage door has can be traced back to the main moving parts:
- spring
- track
- mounting bracket
- hinge roller
Lubricate these and other parts such as the
stems, hinges, metal rollers (and their ball bearings), the arm bar, nubs, and
the lock with a lithium or silicone spray. Do not use WD40 because it can cause
premature rusting. Do not lubricate the track as part of regular
maintenance.
Wipe the inside of the track with a wet cloth,
ten a damp cloth. Only if there are sticky places should you use a little WD40.
Regular cleaning and lubrication will reduce noise issues and help your garage
door open smoothly.
The rollers can be
quick to wear out, so check them for wear and tear. You can pick up new rollers
cheaply at home repair shop or garage door service.
Replace Worn
Bottom Sealers
The seals at the
bottom of your door will take a lot of damage from contact with the drive,
pooled water and animals amongst other things. For fifty dollars and about an
hour’s work you can save yourself a lot of trouble by removing the old seal and
putting a new one on.
Doing this will
help retain heat and protect the garage and its contents from the weather and
possible animal intruders.
When Do I Need
An Expert?
While you can
lubricate the springs and even give them a physical inspection at least twice a
year, we insist that you don’t attempt repairing or replacing springs on your
own unless you have expert knowledge. There is a lot of tension in the spring
(or springs) that help your door move, and an accident in spring repair can
easily cause serious damage or worse.
Warning signs are:
- rust
- worn ends of springs
- fraying of cables
If you see any
wear at all, call us for a safety inspection.
What About An
Off-Track Garage Door?
Your garage door
goes up and down thousands of times a year, so it’s natural for the door to
come off its track easily. Then you go online to see what to do about it and
find mixed results. Some will say they can be fixed DIY style, others will say
no, a few will take a loose mid-ground. We also take a position roughly in the
middle.
One common reason
for your door to go off-track is that the brackets securing the track to the
door. They could be loose, and this will separate the track from the wall. We
suggest that if you see loose screws on the brackets that you screw them back
on first, anchoring them tightly to the wall. Make sure the tracks are
perfectly straight by using a level.
Aside from this
one area, we do not advise attempting to fix garage door tracks on your own.
Obviously, the garage door is one of the most dangerous things in the house
because if there is an accident involving it, it will never be a small one. At
best, your door will simply become non-functional, but damage to your car or
other possessions is quite likely. There is even a chance of badly injuring a pet, family member or guest
or worse.
One long-term study estimates that roughly thirty thousand
people are injured by garage doors and several dozen cases of child death every
year. This works out to roughly eight injuries per day and two deaths
per month, if not more! The majority of these incident tend to happen due to
the garage door suddenly malfunctioning and crushing someone.
While the Consumer
Product Safety Commission has required all automatic garage door systems to
have a built in safety reversing or automatic shut off system if they were made
before 1993, the same body released a worrying statistic in 2013. Forty percent
of the safety systems tested failed to work, sometimes resulting in child
death.
Conclusion
Technology has
undoubtedly improved since the statistics were released in 2013, but unless the
chance of failure is less than two percent, would you really trust an automatic
garage door? These doors can easily weigh over one hundred pounds which is more
than enough to hurt someone is something goes wrong.
Inspect and
maintain your garage door every season. Maintenance requires a small amount of
your time for one day every four months, and the small repairs we’ve mentioned
will go a long way to keeping your garage door functioning properly. However,
if you ever suspect anything is wrong with the track or the spring that holds
the door up (especially if the door only has one central spring) you
need a professional.
We offer same day
or next day service for anyone within [insert number here] miles of
Houston at a reasonable rate. We can also sell you the supplies you need to
look after your door properly. We are always happy to help and will do our best
to come as soon as possible, particularly if the problem is with the track or
springs.
Links
Source (image source for picture) https://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/repair/how-to-repair-a-garage-door.htm
long-term study - https://www.prlog.org/12119423-troubling-statistics-show-high-amount-of-injuries-caused-by-garage-door-accidents.html
long-term study - https://www.prlog.org/12119423-troubling-statistics-show-high-amount-of-injuries-caused-by-garage-door-accidents.html