Is your Racine garage door opener sick or tired?

You can’t expect your Racine garage door opener to raise and lower your garage door with such frequency without it getting a bit worn out by the process. If you go in and out of your garage only once each day of the year, that’s 365 times that the garage door opener will open the door and an equal number of times that it will close the garage door.

Chances are, however, that, while there may be days when you don’t use the garage door, those days are infrequent. Instead, if you’re like most of your Racine neighbors, you probably use the garage door more often than once a day.

Think about it this way; you usually use the garage door five or six days of the week, leaving and returning from work. That means that you use the garage door twice on those days. If you work 250 days out of the year, assuming you have weekends off, you’ll still bring the garage door up and down 500 times.

What about weekends? How often do you go to the store, raising and lowering the garage door to get the car out of the garage? And then you raise and lower the garage door when you return. How about all the times you cut the grass or snow blow the driveway? How about when you garden or rake the leaves? How about all the times you take the recyclables out to the curb? And then there are all those incidental occasions when you have reason to use the garage door opener.

It’s not hard to imagine that your garage door opener will go up and down 1,000 times each year or more. Over a five-year period, that’s 5,000 times. A single-car garage door weighs about 125 pounds. If it’s insulated, the weight can be closer to 150 pounds.

Most folks in Racine have two-and-a-half-sized garages with double-wide doors (16-feet). If made of steel, those doors can weigh about 200 pounds without the insulation. With insulation, they’re often closer to 225 or more pounds.

Garage door openers commonly have ½-horsepower motors. Fortunately, the garage door comes with heavy-duty springs that help to carry much of the load. But we’re still expecting a lot from that garage door opener. They do an admirable job but, over time, it’s inevitable that they grow a little tired. They can get sick, too.

Garage door opener parts can break. Adjustments can slide out of adjustment.

The point is that, if your Racine garage door is getting a little long in the tooth, you may want to have it checked out by a qualified garage door technician. They can identify anything ailing your garage door opener and they can give a boost of energy to many tired garage door openers.

Spring is time for Antioch garage door maintenance

Spring has finally come to Antioch and residents are making the most of the opportunity; they’re out in the garden, they’re cleaning the house, they’re cleaning the garage. Speaking of cleaning your Antioch garage, this is also a good time for a little garage door maintenance.

Garage door maintenance is one of the most overlooked processes among homeowners. Generally, they don’t think much about the garage door until something goes wrong – until the door is crooked, is stuck or won’t open at all. They don’t seem to notice that, overtime, the garage door operates slower and slower while making more and more noise in the process.

Garage door maintenance is the remedy for most of what ails a troubled garage door. Lubrication, in the right places, will keep the garage door opening and closing smoothly, efficiently and quietly. Without lubrication, rust invades the hinges and other parts of the garage door system. It wears at those parts of the garage. In the process, it also makes the garage door opener work harder.

A garage door technician knows all the spots where lubrication is required and what kind of lubrication goes where. They know how the garage door is supposed to operate and will notice if the door isn’t working at its peak performance. They’ll recognize signs of wear and damage.

A garage door technician will ensure that the rollers are gliding smoothly up and down in the tracks where they belong. They’ll know when something is bent or broken. They’ll check the garage door opener and controls to see that they’re in proper working order.

Some homeowners are tempted to perform maintenance on their own garage doors. That’s okay as long as there is nothing seriously wrong; it’s important to remember that the garage door is heavier than it looks and there is enough tension on the springs to seriously injure someone, or worse, if they try to fix the garage door themselves.

The most important thing is that the pros won’t miss spots that require lubrication and they have the experience and expertise to see issues before they become problems. A garage door technician will keep the garage door working at its best while you can focus on the gardening and cleaning of your Antioch home.