Why springs and cables give out
Your average spring is good for around 10,000 trips, one up and one down each. For most families, that's somewhere between five and eight years before it gives out.
Glen Cove's tougher on them than most places. Near the harbor and the beaches, salt rides in on the breeze, the coils rust up, and they start grinding on each other. The cable ends corrode right where they hook into the bottom brackets, so that's the very first spot we eyeball on any call. Plenty of the older detached garages have settled over the decades too, which yanks the track out of line and wears the rollers down lopsided.
For heavy carriage doors, or households where somebody's in and out of the garage all day long, we'll talk to you about high-cycle springs good for 25,000 trips or more. A few bucks extra now, and they hang in there two or three times longer.
Only one of my springs broke. Do I really need to replace both?
If your door has two, yeah, we'd do both. They went up on the same day and have done the exact same number of trips, so the other one's usually not far behind. Swapping both keeps the door balanced and saves you calling us back in a month.
How does a garage door end up off its track?
Usually a car gives it a nudge, a cable snaps on one side, or the rollers are worn flat. We fix whatever caused it, not just the door, or else you'd be ringing us again before long.