Garage Door Spring Replacement
Failed springs replaced in matched pairs and re-tensioned to the actual door weight.
View serviceSigns Of A Broken Garage Door Spring
A broken spring turns a manageable door into its full dead weight in an instant, and on a wide double that is a great deal of steel.
Short answer
Look at the spring above the door, on the shaft. A clear gap in a coil that should be continuous, or two separated halves, is a break and it is unmistakable. Other signs are a door that will not lift or rises a few inches and stalls, a loud bang from the garage, a leaf that has become far too heavy by hand, and an opener that strains then reverses. Do not use the door, and do not pull the release to lift it manually.
The counterbalance system is what makes a garage door movable. Springs store energy as the door comes down and give it back as it goes up, so a correctly balanced leaf feels light enough for one person to lift and stays where it is left. Remove that and the door is simply its own weight, which on the wide double doors that dominate Burlington's housing stock is substantial. Recognising a failed spring matters for two reasons. First, the symptoms are distinctive enough that you can identify it from the driveway without touching anything. Second, almost everything people instinctively do next, pulling the release, lifting harder, holding the button down, is exactly what turns a spring replacement into a bent door, a cable off its drum or a stripped operator.
Diagnose in order
Work Through These Checks
Start at the top. The early checks are the most common causes and need no tools.
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Look for a visible gap in the coil
Stand well back and look at the spring or springs on the shaft above the opening, using a torch. A broken torsion spring shows a clean gap of one to two inches where the coil has separated, usually near a cone. This is the clearest single indicator on the whole door.
What it means: A visible gap is a definitive break. Stop here and leave the door alone.
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Note what the door did when it failed
A spring failure is loud, and people usually describe a bang like a heavy tool hitting concrete, sometimes heard from inside the house. If that sound was followed by a door that would not open, or by an opener that ran and lifted nothing, the two events are almost certainly the same event.
What it means: A bang followed by a door that will not lift is a spring until proven otherwise.
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Watch what the opener does
An operator asked to lift an uncounterbalanced door will strain, hum, move the leaf a few inches, then stop or reverse and often flash a diagnostic pattern. Some units will lift a light single door partway and then trip out. Do not keep trying: each attempt loads the drive it was never meant to carry.
What it means: A motor that runs hard and moves nothing points at counterbalance, not at the motor.
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Check the balance only if nothing is broken
If no gap is visible and nothing looks damaged, and the door is fully closed, disconnect the operator and lift the door by hand. A correctly balanced door moves without great effort and holds position when left halfway. One that crashes down or shoots up has lost its balance even without a clean break.
What it means: A door that will not hold position halfway needs spring work whether or not a coil has parted.
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Look for the damage the failure caused
A spring letting go moves load somewhere. Check for a slack or unwound cable, a leaf sitting out of square, rollers pulled toward the edge of the track, and a bottom bracket that has shifted. Photograph what you see from a safe distance and send it with your request.
What it means: Collateral damage changes the parts needed, so recording it saves a second visit.
Where to stop
Know the Limit
This is the part of a garage door where stored energy is genuinely dangerous. Do not attempt to wind, unwind, adjust or remove a spring: it takes the correct winding bars and the correct calculation, and the failure mode is an injury rather than a broken part. Do not pull the emergency release on a door with a failed spring, because the leaf will then be held by nothing and can drop under its own weight. Keep hands away from cables, drums and bottom brackets, which stay under tension even with the door open, and keep children and vehicles out from underneath the door entirely.
Local conditions
Why It Happens Here
Burlington's spring failures are shaped by width and by season. This is a city of double garages, documented explicitly in Tyandaga, where most homes have a double garage on large properties with double-lane driveways, and in Millcroft, Headon Forest and Shoreacres, and a wide leaf loads its springs harder than a narrow one. Timing follows the cold: with a January daily mean of minus 4.4 degrees, grease thickens, bearings stiffen and spring output drops slightly, so the door needs more effort exactly when the spring has least margin left. Age concentrates it further, since 67 percent of Tyandaga's dwellings and 62 percent of Brant Hills' date from 1961 to 1980, and much of that original hardware has long since passed its rated cycles.
Questions
Common Questions
Can I still get my car out if the spring has broken?
Not safely, and this is the situation where people are most often hurt. With no counterbalance the door is its full weight, which on a wide insulated double is well beyond a comfortable lift, and pulling the release leaves nothing holding it up. If the door is closed with the car inside, leave both where they are and describe the situation when you book. If the door is open, do not close it, and keep everyone from walking underneath it.
Why did it break in the cold?
Because cold reduces the margin the spring had left. A coil near the end of its rated cycles is already working at the edge of what it can deliver, and on a cold morning the grease has thickened, the bearings turn less freely, the steel has contracted slightly and the whole assembly needs more from it. In Burlington the January average high sits at minus 0.6 degrees, which means garages here cross the freezing point routinely rather than staying uniformly cold.
If one spring on my double door broke, does the other need doing?
Almost always, yes. Both coils were fitted at the same time, have taken the same number of cycles under the same load, and are made from the same wire, so the survivor is the same age and condition as the one that failed, and has just absorbed the shock of the failure. Replacing one leaves a mismatched pair with different outputs, which makes a wide leaf lift out of square and usually means a return visit within months.
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Service area
Where We Work
These guides are written for Burlington homes. If the fix is beyond a homeowner check, we work everywhere inside this area.
Map data © Google. Pin shows the service area, not a walk-in location — all work is done at your home.
From the tools
A real callout, not stock imagery.
A sectional door pulled off its tracks, taken down and supported on site so it could be checked and re-hung safely — photographed on the job.