Garage Door Warning
by Jay Allen
The other day Kathy and I heard a huge "BANG" in our garage. Not until later did we discover that it was one of the garage door opener's springs breaking. We discovered this because Ron Molohan was kind enough to come to our house and find the problem for us. Thanks Ron.
FYI about the door. We discovered that the springs in these doors are supposed to last about ten years. Our door has been making an ungodly noise of screeching and humming for over a year now. We also discovered that the noise was most probably caused by poor alignment when it was installed. (No proof)
At a cost of around $400.00 we had both of the springs replaced because the door fixer guy said one new one and one old one might cause uneven stress and break the other old one. He also realigned the door and set it at a lower height to help ease the stress (his words).The door is now so quiet I thought it wasn't working at first.
My point here is, and FYI, that I wonder if I had had the door looked at when it first started it's awful song I might have had it realigned to ease the stress and avoid the broken spring?
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thanks for the info. we too have many 'strange noises', some paul was able to deal with, others not so much!
And if you do it ahead of time, you can call Easy Lift Garage Doors (who installed the door in the first place) and get a better price than we had to pay because, of course, the door broke on a Saturday and we did not want to leave our car out for several days waiting for the repair so we called a door service that works on weekends. Easy Lift does not work weekends, nights or holidays.
Who did you use George...Overhead Door?
I have had two repairs in 3 years on my garage door. The first one was a warranty call on what I don't remember, but the worst one was when the "arm" that attaches to the door snapped completely off, sheared bolts, etc. Service tech adjusted the springs too and he said it was a defective install. Easy Lift repaired it, but I had to pay half a typical service call price.
Now, sometimes the push button on the wall operates the door, sometimes it doesn't and I have to use the remote.
At my former home, I had the that garage door opener for 14 years, with no professional service calls........
And I'll bet Overhead Door installed your old one too. Believe there have been several problems, some even having to install a new opener after several service calls by Easy Lift while under warranty, but never fixing the problem. Warranty was up and they had to replace themselves. I hear one of my neighbors banging as it makes the final closure...kinda like it just falls the last foot or so.
Same here as to the life of an opener, maybe 20 years on ours, shouldn't be happening. If they were not properly installed won't that put strain on the springs and life of the opener will be shortened.
Sounds like you're lucky you didn't have some damage done to your car.
Just became aware of another problem this weekend.....several windows have a rough, pebbled surface on the "outside" can't see it by just looking, only when you run your hand over them. I believe they would still be under warranty, might want to check yours out!
Jay and Kathy, by coincidence we just had our garage door repaired, also. It made an exploding noise only when it raised; it was quiet going down. Brian Bauer looked at it and realized two of the four bolts holding the steel track to the wall (on the right side) were never installed! The right track had pulled away from the wall nearly 1.5 inches! Brian had the garage door technician come over the next morning. He did a great job of affixing, realigning both tracks, and lubing the whole thing. Works fine now - Brian said it was a construction defect which would be covered beyond the usual one year fit-and-finish warranty. Case closed!
We used Elk Grove Garage Door Service. They work 24 hours a day and do not charge more for weekends or nights. Their prices were a little more for the springs...$168 per spring. Plus $80 service call and installation. They were very prompt, worked fast and neatly and guarantee the work for 5 years.
And we were at our last house 10 years without any problem with the garage door. The previous house I had to that had the old wooden garage door and one of the springs broke and shot thru the garage wall. Luckily without hitting anybody. That was after 14 years of using it.
I guess we are lucky that there was no damage to the car and that Ron was available and willing to help us get the car out to use until the garage door people could come. Ron is such a handy neighbor to have.