
Garage Door Spring Repair
Counterbalance corrected on intact springs so a wide door lifts level again.
View detailsFailed springs replaced in matched pairs and re-tensioned to the actual door weight.

Replacing a spring is a measuring job before it is an installation job. The right spring is determined by the door's actual weight, its travel height, the drum size and the cycle expectation, not by copying whatever happens to be on the shaft. That distinction carries weight in Burlington because so much of the stock is wide: a double door specified from a guess rather than a measurement is overworked from its first cycle, and it takes the cables, drums and rollers down with it as the balance stays wrong throughout its short life.
A correctly specified spring set on a properly balanced door lasts until it has spent the cycles it was rated for, and the honest way to talk about that is in openings rather than in years. Divide the rating by the number of times your household opens the door in a day and you have a realistic horizon. What shortens it is a leaf that has grown heavier than the spring, a garage damp enough to pit the wire, or an operator forcing a door through resistance it should never meet. Those three things are worth watching more than any calendar date.
Work through the symptom first — some of these turn out to need no technician at all.
Every lift and lower spends one cycle of a finite allowance, and a spring eventually simply arrives at the end of its rating. The break usually appears near a cone or at a corroded point along the wire.
Damp air, road salt and grit collect in a garage that is not heated. Corrosion pits the wire, and a pitted spring fails well short of the cycle count it was sold as being good for.
A spring never matched to the door's weight is overloaded from day one. It fails early, and because balance was wrong throughout, the wear shows up in the cables, drums and rollers as well.
Replaced sections, added glazing, an insulated upgrade or accumulated repair hardware all add weight. The spring keeps its original rating while the leaf it lifts has grown beyond it.
Cycle expectation is worth deciding deliberately here, because Burlington households use their garages differently street to street. Where the garage is the everyday entrance, and Tansley Woods bungaloft owners were specifically sold garages designed so they could park and walk straight in, a higher-cycle spring set is a sensible specification rather than an upsell. Where a large detached Tyandaga or Roseland garage is used mainly for vehicle storage, standard cycle life may be entirely adequate. Width matters too: the wide doubles that dominate Millcroft, Headon Forest, Shoreacres and Tyandaga carry more weight per spring, which makes accurate sizing and even drum winding the difference between a long life and a repeat visit.
A spring being replaced is either fully wound or being wound, and in both states it holds enough energy to break bones. Winding bars of the correct size, a supported door and an unobstructed working area are not optional. Cables should never be released while a spring is under tension, and a bottom bracket must not be unbolted on a closed door with a live spring behind it. Where an old spring has already broken, the remaining hardware is treated as suspect rather than assumed sound, because the failure usually moved load somewhere it was not designed to go.
The door's weight, travel height, drum size and existing wire, length and inside diameter are all recorded. Those numbers are the specification, and they matter more on a wide leaf than anything else on the job.
The header, the anchor backing, the centre bearing plate and the shaft are inspected before tension goes anywhere near them. On older Mountainside and Aldershot garages that backing may be original timber that has moved.
The new set is installed and wound with proper bars to the calculated turns, then the drums are set so both cables wind evenly. On a wide door, even winding is what keeps the leaf square.
The door is cycled by hand and should hold position when raised halfway. Only once it does is the operator reconnected, and its force settings and safety reversal are then tested.

Counterbalance corrected on intact springs so a wide door lifts level again.
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Frayed or unwound lift cables renewed and re-seated on their drums.
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Seasonal inspection and adjustment that catches wear before it strands a car.
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Garage Door Spring Replacement is available across every Burlington neighbourhood inside the area below.
Map data © Google. Pin shows the service area, not a walk-in location — all work is done at your home.

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.