What we work on

Garage door repair

Most faults announce themselves before they strand anyone. A door that hesitates, reverses part way down or runs crooked is naming a specific failed component, and the diagnosis decides the repair rather than the other way round.

(469) 281-7750 Request a callback

If the door is stuck part way and you can hear tension in the springs, leave it alone. A door under load can drop without warning.

What garage door repair actually involves

Most garage door problems announce themselves before they strand you. A door that hesitates, reverses partway down, jerks on one side or has started grinding is telling you a specific component is failing. We diagnose the actual cause rather than replacing whatever is easiest to sell.

A garage door is the largest and heaviest moving object in a typical house, and it is under spring tension whether it is open or closed. That is why the diagnosis matters. Replacing an opener on a door whose real problem is a bent track just moves the failure a few months down the road and puts more load on the new motor. We test the door balance by hand before we touch the electrical side, because a door that will not stay put at waist height is a spring problem no opener can compensate for.

Signs you are dealing with this

The door opens a few inches then stops or reverses
One side lifts faster than the other and the door looks crooked
Grinding, scraping or a loud bang during operation
The door closes then immediately goes back up
The opener runs but the door does not move

What we check on arrival

Spring tension and door balance with the opener disconnected
Cable condition at both drums and the bottom brackets
Track alignment, fasteners and roller wear
Photo eye alignment and safety reverse function
Opener travel limits, force settings and gear condition

How it goes

How a visit runs

Four steps, in this order, every time.

01
You describe what it is doing

On the phone we ask what the door does, what it sounds like and when it started. That usually narrows the cause to two or three possibilities before we load the truck.
02
We test the door, not just the symptom

On arrival the opener comes off the door first. A properly balanced door lifts by hand and holds where you leave it. What it actually does tells us where the fault is.
03
You get the price before work starts

We explain what failed, what it will take to fix it, and what it costs. Nothing gets replaced and nothing gets charged until you say go.
04
We cycle it and check the safety systems

Before we leave, the door runs a full cycle several times, the safety reverse gets tested against an obstruction, and we walk you through what we changed.

Typical range

$150 to $600

A single roller or hinge sits at the low end. A repair involving springs, cables and track alignment together sits at the high end.

This is a range, not a quote. The exact price comes after we see the door and you approve it before any work starts. Call (469) 281-7750 and describe what it is doing.

Before we get there

If the door is stuck part way and you can hear tension in the springs, leave it alone. A door under load can drop without warning.

What people get wrong about this

The opener is broken, because the door will not go up.

A garage door opener is a half to three quarter horsepower motor. It is built to guide a door that the springs are already holding almost weightless, not to lift one. A double door weighs somewhere between 150 and 250 pounds. When a torsion spring breaks, that whole weight lands on a motor that was never sized for it, so the opener strains, clicks or does nothing at all. The opener is usually the symptom. The spring is usually the fault.

What to do: Pull the release cord only if the door is already fully closed, then try lifting by hand. If it will not move or feels like dead weight, it is the spring.

Only one spring broke, so only one needs replacing.

Torsion springs are rated in cycles, and one cycle is one trip up and one trip down. A standard spring is rated at about 10,000 cycles, which at four openings a day works out to roughly seven years. On a two spring door both springs were installed on the same day and have turned the same number of times. When the first one goes the second is at the end of the same countdown. Replacing one leaves a mismatched pair, and the new spring carries a load it was not balanced for.

What to do: Replace them as a pair. Ask what cycle rating you are getting, because a higher cycle spring costs a little more and lasts considerably longer.

The door starts down and then goes back up, so the opener is faulty.

Every residential garage door opener sold in the United States since 1993 has to carry an entrance protection system, which in practice means the two photo eyes mounted about six inches off the floor on either side of the opening. They watch for an unbroken infrared beam. A bicycle wheel, a bag of compost, a cobweb, a knocked bracket or direct afternoon sun falling on the receiving eye will all break or wash out that beam, and the opener does exactly what it is designed to do and sends the door back up.

What to do: Look at the two small lights near the floor. One steady and one flickering, or one dark, means alignment. Clear the path, wipe both lenses, and straighten the brackets by hand.

The door is stuck, so I should pull the red cord and force it.

The red release handle disconnects the door from the opener trolley. If the door is closed, that is a safe thing to do. If the door is part way or fully open and the spring that was holding it has broken, releasing the trolley removes the last thing keeping it up, and a 200 pound door can come down in about a second. This is the single most common way people get hurt by a garage door.

What to do: Only pull the release when the door is all the way down. If it is stuck part way open, leave it, keep people and cars out from under it, and call.

The door is only a few years old, so nothing should be wearing out.

Springs do not age by calendar, they age by use. A household that opens the door six times a day gets through a 10,000 cycle spring in about four and a half years. A household that opens it twice a day gets close to fourteen years out of the same part. Two identical doors installed on the same street on the same day can be years apart in real wear, which is why age alone is a poor guide to condition.

What to do: Count roughly how many times a day the door runs. That number, not the age of the house, tells you where the springs are in their life.

How this varies across the metroplex

Balance is tested with the opener disconnected at the emergency release. A correctly sprung door lifted to waist height stays where it is put. If it drops, the springs have lost tension and the opener is carrying weight it was never designed to carry. A double door weighs roughly 150 to 250 pounds, and the springs hold that, not the motor.
Single layer steel has a thin skin and no backing, so damage shows as denting and as section edges that flex where a strut should be. Hinge holes elongate at the end stiles because there is little metal around them. The door stays light, which keeps spring and opener load low but does nothing for panel stiffness.
Insulated steel doors fail differently from thin skinned ones. The bonded core keeps panels rigid, so dents are less common, but the added weight loads the springs harder and the end stiles carry more strain at the roller brackets. Delamination at a panel edge shows up before any skin damage does, and a hardened bottom seal lets moisture sit against the lowest section.
The opener is the part that stops working, though it is often not the part that is broken. A motor that strains or reverses partway is usually reporting resistance in the door, such as a spring down on turns or a roller binding in bent track. Disconnecting the trolley and moving the door by hand separates the two in under a minute.
A modern opener senses force and reverses when the door resists, which means it quits earlier in the failure sequence than an older unit would. That reads as an opener problem on a door that is only beginning to bind. Track alignment and roller condition usually explain the reversal without anything being wrong inside the head unit.
An opener from before 1993 has no photo eyes, so its only obstruction response is a mechanical force adjustment that was often turned up to compensate for a door growing heavier. That setting hides the underlying balance problem rather than solving it. Testing the door by hand with the trolley released shows what the motor has been absorbing.
Garages built in the 1960s and 1970s commonly still carry wood doors or early sectional steel on extension springs, with the original jamb hardware. Extension spring systems of that period were often installed without containment cables, so a broken spring can travel. Track is frequently light gauge, and the header may never have been sized for a later replacement door.
Doors installed through the 1990s and 2000s are mostly sectional steel on torsion springs, which changes what wears out. A standard torsion spring is rated near 10,000 cycles, and one cycle is a single opening and closing, so stock from that period is at or past its first spring life. Nylon rollers with unsealed bearings are the other predictable item.

Coverage

Repair across the metroplex

Pick a city for what the door population there means for this job.

Dallas County10

Denton County6

Tarrant County11

Collin County5

Get a price

Tell us what the door is doing

If the door is stuck open or will not close, call. That is a security problem and the phone is faster than anything else on this page.

(469) 281-7750

A person answers 7am to 11pm.

Questions

Garage door repair, asked and answered

What does garage door repair cost?

A single roller or hinge sits at the low end. A repair involving springs, cables and track alignment together sits at the high end. Typical Dallas Fort Worth market range for this work. It is not a quote. The on site estimate is free and that is the number that counts.

How long does garage door repair take?

Most repairs take one to two hours on site. A garage door is the largest and heaviest moving object in a typical house, and it is under spring tension whether it is open or closed.

Is the work guaranteed?

Parts and labour carry a 5 year warranty. The price is agreed before any work starts, and the on site estimate is free.

Where do you cover?

32 cities across the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex, worked from Coppell. Dallas, Tarrant, Denton and Collin Counties.

Does it change depending on the door?

Balance is tested with the opener disconnected at the emergency release. A correctly sprung door lifted to waist height stays where it is put. If it drops, the springs have lost tension and the opener is carrying weight it was never designed to carry. A double door weighs roughly 150 to 250 pounds, and the springs hold that, not the motor. Single layer steel has a thin skin and no backing, so damage shows as denting and as section edges that flex where a strut should be. Hinge holes elongate at the end stiles because there is little metal around them. The door stays light, which keeps spring and opener load low but does nothing for panel stiffness.

Get it fixed

Need garage door repair?

Tell us what the door is doing. The estimate on site is free.