Leave your Fox Lake garage spring repair to a garage door technician

Imagine it’s a sunny Fox Lake morning as you press the button to open the garage door and rest a moment as it begins to rise. Suddenly, something seems wrong. The door seems as though it’s struggling. Then it stops and slips back a little. That’s definitely not right.

Did the garage door opener break? Is there some kind of belt or chain that broke?

You could slide under the door to see what the problem is but definitely not in these clothes and, besides, what would your Fox Lake neighbors think if they saw you. So, you go through the front door of the house and enter the garage from the interior door where the garage attaches to the house.

Maybe if you had spent more time looking at the mechanism, you’d know what to look for. But, from what you can see, everything seems fine. “Oh well,” you say to yourself. “Guess I’d better call a garage door technician to take a look.”

The technician comes out, walks in the garage, looks up at the inner works of your garage door and says, “Your spring is broken.”

“It’s that obvious?” you ask.

“Well, if you look at garage doors every day …”

The garage door spring is as large as 2-1/2” in diameter and up to 40” long. It’s a heavy spring that takes the weight off the load when raising and lowering the garage door. When the spring is properly installed and unbroken, you can lift the garage door relatively easily by hand. But, when the spring is broken, it’s a real strain to raise the garage door and possibly more than you can handle.

In some cases there are two springs. One spring or two, this is not a job for the Do-It-Yourselfer. The tension in a garage door spring is immense. If done improperly, the spring could shoot out during removal or installation and someone can be seriously injured or even killed.

In other words, if you want it done right, and you want it done safely, you needed to call a garage door technician to your Fox Lake home for this job.

Antioch winter weather will test your garage door and garage door opener

When did you last perform maintenance on your Antioch garage door? Have you ever had maintenance performed on your Antioch garage door? If you’re like most people, you probably fit in the latter category of people who have never had maintenance performed on their garage door.

Garage door maintenance is crucial to extending the life of your garage door, garage door opener and components. This makes all-the-more sense when winter rolls into Antioch.

Winter will test your garage door, garage door opener and various components. Whatever grease is in the bearings that guide the door panels up and down in the rails will thicken as the weather gets colder. There should be an ample amount of grease but that isn’t always the case. In fact, more often than not, it isn’t the case.

When the doors aren’t maintained, the rollers don’t roll as smoothly. The doors will bind up and stick. The degree to which the garage door drags as it moves up and down may seem almost imperceptible to the naked eye, but you can believe its effects are very real.

When the garage door doesn’t move up and down as easily it puts more strain on the motor of the garage door opener. If you could put your hand on the motor, and compare to when the door moved smoother, you might notice that the motor is getting hotter as it drives the door up and down without proper maintenance.

The rollers in the rails will also get hotter as they move up and down in their channels. Heat is not the friend of moving parts that come into contact.

As the lack of maintenance takes its toll, metal parts will strain and twist as they bear the extra burden of a garage door that is not as smooth as the day it was installed.

Maintenance of your Antioch garage door and garage door opener reduces the strain. Your garage door will last longer needing fewer repairs. More than that, it will continue to run smoother, quieter and operate with the speed you’re used to.