Dan's Garage Door Blog - Archive – Technical Support

The steel-coiled snake that is your garage door spring has had an easy summer, more than likely.

But as September begins, many homeowners may be using their garage doors more.  Back to school means back to extra-curricular activities, meetings, sports, and more work hours.  As the temperatures drop towards winter, your older garage door spring may give way due to brittle conditions from the cold, coupled with the increased use.

If you are mechanically-inclined and basically skilled, you may want to look into doing it yourself.  DDM has a wealth of information in our “How To Replace Garage Door Springs” page, and we have Clopay EZ-set and Wayne Dalton Torquemaster instructions as well.  Additionally, we now have a “One Spring To Two” conversion page to address system conversion concerns and of course, cover the instructions  for doing the job.  Please read and heed all safety precautions highlighted at these pages.

Soon, I also plan on a blog which will catalog the most frequently asked questions when customers call.  DDM wishes you a safe and productive fall season!

Wikipedia says troubleshooting is “a form of problem solving most often applied to repair of failed products or processes. It is a logical, systematic search for the source of a problem so that it can be solved, and so the product or process can be made operational again.”

Garage door operation consists of parts (electronic and mechanical) in process, in delicate balance, fine-tuned to open and close the door safely and smoothly.  And every so often, there is some trouble we would want to “shoot.”

So it was not surprising to see many garage door questions in sites like Yahoo! Answers. Question types I have observed in scanning this site can probably be ranked in frequency order: 1. “Why does my door go part of the way up, and then back down?” and 2. “Why does my door work some times and not others?”

With increased recreational and commercial use of the garage, residents and businesses may notice door problems starting.

DDM has laid out answers to the above questions and many more in our troubleshooting page you can connect to from do-it-yourself instructions at left or above.  There you will find a logical resource, with the research done, and backed by years of experience.   Sometimes, the issue requires part replacement, and other times part correction and/or lubrication.  But in any case, no one needs to go on with a jerky, uneven, stuck, or inoperable door.  DDM has it covered!

This blog has been moved to the tutorial page.

This blog has been moved to the tutorial page.

This blog has been moved to the tutorial page.

Please see our Using Torsion Springs with Different Lifts Tutorial.

This blog entry has been moved to the tutorial page.

This blog entry has been moved to the tutorial page.

Other web sites have calculators for determining your door weight to help in selecting the correct garage door springs. The most important part of the program to remember is that the door weights given are only approximations. In other words, they are not reliable for ordering garage door springs.

Here are two examples.

First, how much does a 16 X 7 Wood Panel door with 3 struts weigh? Some of the newer doors with 1/8″ or 3/16″ panels, narrow rails and 22 ga. struts weigh 240-250 lbs. Some of the older doors with 1/4″ panels, wide rails, several paintings and 20 ga. struts weigh 350-360 lbs. I’ve replaced garage door springs on both.

Second, how much does a 16X7 steel insulated sandwich door with steel on both sides and one strut weigh? Clopay has a 2″ sandwich door that weighs 260 lbs. I’ve replaced garage door springs on several of them. Just recently I replaced springs on a newer Wayne Dalton garage door that weighed 126 lbs.

At DDM Garage Doors we go to great lengths helping customers find the right garage door springs that will balance their garage doors as nearly perfectly as possible. We don’t apologize for asking you to jump through hoops to order from us.

We have records of hundreds of garage doors with their weights gathered from 28 years of replacing garage door springs. Any information you can get from your garage door will be helpful.

If you can’t identify the make of your door, and if you are not sure your spring measurements are correct for the door, we recommend that you weigh your door, identify your cable drums, and measure your track radius. More information on how to do this is available at http://ddmgaragedoors.com/residential/torsion-springs.php.

This blog has been moved to the tutorial page.