DIY Garage Door Springs

One of the great things about being a home owner in this day and ages is that you never have to feel like you truly can't do something. The internet and YouTube in particular are there for us along with online instruction manuals which make us think that no job, with the right tools, is truly beyond us. However it should be said that sometimes we DIYers need to know our limits. There are a lot of things, even some related to garage doors that can be done by an adventurous DIYer, but there is one part of the garage door system that you should not be screwing with unless you truly know what you are doing. No matter what sort of springs your garage door system is using you should steer clear of doing too much work in that area because of the possible dangers they can pose to those inexperienced with garage doors and garage door repair. This article could easily turn into a buzzfeed style listicle where you are just shown a bunch of overly violent videos of what can go wrong when tampering with a garage door spring, but that seems like it could be scarring to some and boring for others. Instead what we’ll take a look at is the sort of things you can do on your own and what you cannot, in regard to your torsion or extension springs.

The first thing you can do with your torsion or extension springs is something you have probably done already without really knowing about the dangers they can pose and that is use them for their real purpose. It’s what you will probably use your springs for 99% of the time and it is why you bought your whole garage door contraption in the first place. Garage door springs do their job every day lifting and closing garage doors and manufacturers everywhere have done their job to make it as easy as possible. This means if you have gotten a quality installation that you should be able to open and close your garage door, with the help of your garage door springs, every day without worry.

The next thing you can probably trust yourself to take care of is your routine maintenance. Things like checking for damage or rust and seasonal lubrication is pretty easy to get done in just a few minutes every few months. This sort of maintenance should keep your garage door working well until the very end of your springs’ usefulness. If all of the safety equipment is in place and you do the proper amount of reading up on how to check and lubricate your springs when they need it you should not be in danger of being on the receiving end of the force that they keep wound up tight in their coils. If you are totally clueless of how to do that and don’t feel like doing the homework in order to educate yourself then you may not be such an avid DIYer after all, but you can still call somebody to do the work for you.

One thing that you really shouldn’t do on your own is replace snapped or otherwise not working garage door springs. This can be a very dangerous job if you don’t know what you’re doing and  can also be a hassle for those unaccustomed to the work. Because these springs can hold a lot of potential energy in them tampering with them can become dangerous and isn’t really recommended even if they have already broken once. It is a good idea to remember that while one of your garage door springs may have snapped most garage doors utilize two springs and so the other may not have yet snapped. The other problems that arise from trying to replace a garage door spring yourself is the sheer amount of work that goes into the project. You most likely will spend a lot of time and effort looking into what kind and size of garage spring you need for your replacement. After that you will need to find the proper size garage spring from a local retailer and most likely buy new tools in order to be well equipped for the job. All of this will need to be done, sadly, while you are unable to use your garage door, which may make getting all of these things harder as you may not have a car to use. Being unable to use your car means that the longer this job goes on, which could still take hours once you have everything you need, the longer you are inconvenienced by the lack of a working garage door. 

Another thing you won’t want to do as an amateur garage door worker/home owner is remove still working garage door springs. While you may think that you are all properly equipped to remove your garage door it is best to leave something like this to the professionals for a variety of reasons. When removing a garage door entirely you will also need to be removing the garage door springs which means that you are going to be moving around and possibly damaging already aged garage door springs. You may not know the exact age or the amount of wear and tear on these garage door springs which means that your movements and jostling could very well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back as it were. It is best to leave this type of work to a professional who can take the proper precautions to remove possibly dangerous garage door springs and install new ones if you are having that done as well. Removing older garage door springs also oftentimes takes longer than installing new garage door springs because of the rust and wear and tear that may have built up on the springs.

So there you have it. When it comes to garage door springs you can pretty much do everything that needs to be done in the interim of their lifespan, otherwise it is best to leave it to the professionals. You want a professional to take care of them at the beginning and end of their service to you and besides that you shouldn’t have to do too much with them and so should be safe. With that said remember that if you heard a loud noise in your home some day and can’t quite place what it could be, check your garage door to see if it opens and you may very well find the culprit to be your garage door springs.