Broken Garage Door Spring: What to Do When the Door Won't Lift

It usually starts with a bang. You're in the house, you hear a sharp crack from the garage that sounds like something heavy dropped, and later you go out to find the door won't lift. The opener hums or strains, the door barely moves, and if you try to raise it by hand it feels like it's been loaded with concrete. That's the classic signature of a broken garage door spring, and it happens to garage doors in Yakima, Selah, Union Gap and across the rest of the valley.

What the spring actually does

Most people assume the opener lifts the door. It doesn't. A sectional garage door is a heavy stack of panels, and a double-wide door can weigh well over a hundred pounds. The springs carry that weight. A torsion spring sits on a steel bar above the door opening and winds up as the door comes down, then unwinds to help lift it back up. Some doors use extension springs instead, which run along the horizontal tracks on either side and stretch and contract. Either way, the spring is storing a lot of energy, and the opener is only there to guide the door along a balanced path.

How to tell it's the spring

• You heard a loud bang from the garage and the door has been hard to move ever since.
• The opener runs but the door barely lifts, or it lifts a few inches and drops back.
• You can see a gap in the coil of the spring above the door, or the spring looks stretched out and uneven.
• A lift cable is hanging loose or has slipped off the drum at the end of the bar.
• The door feels extremely heavy when you try it by hand with the opener released, instead of floating at about waist height.

What not to do

Please don't try to wind, adjust or release a torsion spring yourself. That tension is the reason these jobs are left to trained technicians with the right winding bars and the experience to use them. A slipped bar or a spring that lets go mid-adjustment can cause serious injuries. The same goes for the cables and the brackets at the bottom corners of the door, which are under load whenever the door is closed. Leave them alone.

• Don't keep pressing the opener button. Forcing the opener to drag a door that has lost its spring can strip the opener's drive and damage the door.
• Don't stand or park under a door that is partly open. A door with a broken spring can drop without warning.
• Don't put your fingers in the gaps between panels while lifting. Those joints close like a hinge.
• Don't pry at the spring, the bar or the cable drums, and don't try to re-hook a loose cable.
• Don't order a spring online and plan to figure it out. Springs are matched to the weight and height of your particular door, and the wrong one makes the door unsafe.

If your car is shut inside

This is the most stressful version of the problem, and it's more common than you'd think, especially on older doors. If the door is fully closed with the car inside, the best choice is to leave the door alone and call. If you must try to move it, know what you're dealing with. The red emergency release cord hanging from the opener track disconnects the door from the opener, which lets you move it by hand. Only pull that cord when the door is completely closed, never when it is partly open, because a door with a dead spring can fall the moment it's released.

With the spring broken, the door will be at its full weight, and lifting it is hard on your back and risky for your hands. Keep your fingers away from the panel joints, hold the door only by the bottom edge or the handles, and don't leave it propped on anything that could slip. If it won't go up easily, stop. Waiting for a technician beats an injured hand, and the car isn't going anywhere in the meantime.

What a technician does on a repair call

A good technician doesn't stop at swapping one spring. They check the whole system: the second spring on the bar, the cables, the drums, the rollers, the tracks and the balance of the door. Springs on one door have lived through the same number of cycles, so when one breaks, the other is often close behind, and replacing them together keeps the door balanced. SCI Door says its technicians check every component, from the springs and cables to the rollers and safety sensors, and they explain the problem and the options before any work begins.

On timing, SCI Door's own guidance is that many repairs get done the same day, depending on the issue and on whether the parts are on hand. If your door is stuck open in a cold snap or stuck closed with your only vehicle inside, say so when you call so the schedule can reflect it.

Your next step

If your door won't lift and you think the spring is the cause, stay clear of it and give SCI Door a call at (509) 575-7955. The office is open Monday through Thursday from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM and Friday from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and the crew works with homes and businesses in Yakima, Selah, Naches, Moxee, Wapato, Union Gap, Toppenish and across the valley. SCI Door has been licensed in Washington since 1998, and the shop is at 1118 N 6th Ave, Yakima.