Garage door services
Garage door spring repair
Springs carry the door’s weight, not the opener. They are rated in open-and-close cycles, and replacing them is never a DIY job.
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Written by HyreGarage Research Desk Primary-source research and fact checking
The short answer
Garage door springs carry the weight of the door, so the opener only has to move it. Springs are rated in cycles, where one open and one close is one cycle.
The same 10,000-cycle spring lasts about 13.7 years at two cycles a day and 2.7 years at ten. Replacing a spring is not homeowner work: a torsion spring stores enough energy to cause serious injury or death.
If this is happening now
A broken spring means the door cannot be lifted safely, and your car may be stuck inside. Do not pull the emergency release and lift it by hand.
Without the spring, you would be holding the door’s full weight, and a sectional door is far heavier than one person can safely hold. Leave the door where it is and call a garage door company. You can also reach HyreGarage on (866) 582-8523.
Key takeaways
How often the door runs matters more than how old the spring is.
The same 10,000-cycle spring gives either, depending on use. See our spring life research.
On a two-spring door, the second one is the same age and has done the same work.
Wire size, inside diameter, length and cycle rating are.
The opener is not built to lift the door. Running it on a failed spring burns it out.
The spring holds its energy whether the door is up or down.
How do I know a garage door spring is broken?
The first four mean a spring has failed. The last three mean one is going out of balance, so you still have time to book the work.
Often at night or in cold weather, with nothing obviously wrong after. That is a torsion spring snapping.
A visible gap of one to two inches in the spring above the door.
Or the opener strains and reverses.
One side is higher. Usually a cable that failed after an extension spring broke.
You notice it when lifting by hand with the opener released.
Let go and it drops or drifts up.
It has been doing the spring’s job.
What should a technician measure before quoting?
A spring is defined by four numbers. A quote made without taking them is a guess.
Measured across twenty coils and divided, because one coil is too small to measure accurately.
The width inside the coil. It is stamped on the end cone of most torsion springs.
The spring’s length at rest. With wire size and diameter, it sets how much lift the spring gives.
Left-wound and right-wound springs are not interchangeable. A two-spring door has one of each.
Best weighed, not guessed. An insulated three-layer door weighs more than a single-layer door of the same size.
They wear with the spring and are cheap to replace while everything is apart.
What does garage door spring replacement involve?
Shown so you can tell whether it was done right, not so you can do it. Unwinding a loaded torsion spring with the wrong tool is a known cause of serious injury.
The door is clamped or locked and the opener unplugged before anything is touched.
Any tension left is wound out with proper winding bars. Screwdrivers and rebar are the swaps that show up in injury reports.
Wire size, inside diameter, length and wind direction. Copying the old spring without measuring can repeat a spec that was wrong.
On a two-spring door both springs come off. Cables fray from the inside, so new ones are cheap insurance.
Set from the door’s weight, not by feel. This is where a balanced door is made or missed.
Opener released, door lifted to waist height and let go. It should stay about where it is.
Photo-eyes aligned and auto-reverse shown working. The opener’s force setting may need resetting now the balance has changed.
Torsion or extension: which springs do I have?
Look where the spring sits. It changes the parts, the labor and how it fails.
| Spring setup | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Torsion: on a bar above the door | The common modern type. It stores energy by twisting. When it breaks, it stays on the bar, so it is the safer failure even though it holds more energy. Needs space above the door. |
| Extension: long springs beside the side tracks | Older, and still common where space above the door is short. It stores energy by stretching. It must have a safety cable running through it. Without one, a breaking spring can fly across the garage. |
| One spring or two | Two torsion springs share the load, usual on double doors. If one broke, the other has done the same work and is near the end too. |
| Cycle rating | Commonly 10,000, 20,000, 25,000 or 50,000 cycles. This number decides how long the repair lasts, and it is the one most often missing from a quote. |
What moves the price
Spring work is priced as parts plus labor. These things move the price more than where you live.
| Factor | Why it changes the number |
|---|---|
| Torsion or extension | Different parts, different labor and different safety cables. |
| One spring or two | Replacing both costs more today and almost always less over the life of the door. |
| Cycle rating | The biggest lever. A higher-cycle spring uses heavier wire and costs more up front, for a longer life. |
| Cables, drums and bearings | Usually replaced at the same time. Cheap while the door is apart, a full service call later. |
| Door weight and size | A double or insulated door needs a heavier spring than a single-layer single door. |
| After-hours timing | A Friday evening break with a car stuck inside is priced differently from a booked weekday visit. |
HyreGarage publishes no national average price for this work. Door construction, spring specification, regional labor and disposal rates move it far enough that a single figure would mislead.
What should I ask before comparing spring quotes?
Ask for the cycle rating. Two quotes that both say “new springs” can be a 10,000-cycle spring and a 25,000-cycle spring. Those last very different lengths of time, and the invoice will not show it. Our spring life research turns cycle ratings into years for real households.
What to ask before you sign
Is this a torsion or extension system, and how many springs does the door have?
What cycle rating are the springs you are quoting?
What wire size, inside diameter and length?
Are you replacing both springs? If not, why not?
Did you weigh the door or estimate it?
Are the cables, drums and bearings being replaced too?
On an extension system, are the safety cables in place?
Will you balance-test the door by hand and show me?
Will you retest the photo-eyes and auto-reverse afterward?
What warranty covers the springs, and what covers the labor? How long is each?
The full ten-point checklist is on choosing a garage door company.
What to have ready
Single or double, and roughly how old.
Taken from the ground with the door closed. Do not climb up to them.
Roughly how many times a day it opens and closes. The cycle rating is matched to this.
Whether it has been getting louder or slower.
Whether the springs were replaced before and, if you have the paperwork, at what rating.
Where this goes wrong
The other spring is the same age and has done the same number of cycles. Expect a second service call, at full labor, soon.
It names no cycle rating, wire size or length. It makes two very different jobs look like the same purchase.
The opener ends up lifting the door, which it was never built to do. A broken spring left in place often costs you an opener too.
Winding bars exist for a reason. Screwdrivers and rebar slipping out of a loaded spring cone show up again and again in garage door repair injury data.
The cable keeps a broken spring from flying across the garage. On an older setup, check that it is there.
Get connected
Tell us about the work
Three short steps: the job, your home, and how to reach you. Nothing goes to a garage door company unless you agree.
A straight answer first. Matching is still being built, so this is not a dispatch line. If a spring has snapped or the door is off its track, leave it closed and call a local garage door company now.
Find a Garage Door Professional
Tell us about the door and where you are. We will follow up about connecting you with garage door companies serving your area.
Questions
How long do garage door springs last?
Can I replace a garage door spring myself?
Should I replace both springs if only one broke?
Why did my garage door spring break at night?
Can I open my garage door with a broken spring?
Are high-cycle springs worth the extra cost?
Does the opener need adjusting after new springs?
Written and audited by
HyreGarage Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are not a garage door company. We read the agency file, the code record, the standards document or the public register ourselves, compute the figure from it, and publish it with the source and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. Our own company records cover ten states; nothing national is ever derived from them.
- 10
- states our own company records cover — and the limit of any claim made from them
- 3,901
- garage door companies in the store
- 457
- license records verified against a state board
- 0
- national claims made from a ten-state store
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Injury counts come from CPSC. Housing counts come from the Census file, not from a summary of it. Code history comes from the building commission that adopted the code. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we retrieve the source and do the arithmetic ourselves.
- Every figure carries its retrieval date. Registers change, datasets are revised and codes are amended. A number without the date it was read cannot be checked, so every study states one.
- Fact, calculation and analysis are labeled apart. A quote is a quote, a HyreGarage computation says so, and an interpretation says “HyreGarage analysis”. Presenting our reading of a dataset as something the agency stated would be the easiest way to lose the only thing this desk is for.
- Limitations go above the fold. If a figure is an upper bound, a bracket, or an association rather than a cause, that is said before the figure is quoted rather than in a footnote underneath it.
- No DIY instructions for spring, cable or track work. Those components hold enough stored energy to cause serious injury, and CPSC records the consequences. We describe what has failed and what a competent repair involves; we do not tell you how to do it.
Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
Information on this page is general and varies with the door, the opener, local code and circumstance. It is not safety, insurance or legal advice.
Springs and cables hold dangerous stored energy: adjusting or replacing them is work for a trained technician. HyreGarage does not repair, replace or install garage doors.
This page explains the work so you can judge a quote and a company.