Brooks Garage Door Services | Feb 26, 2021
Signs Your Garage Door Needs To Be Repaired or Replaced
Timely and regular maintenance of your garage door can keep it optimal and fully functional for a number of years. But as it is busy moving on a daily basis, various parts can erode and will need to be replaced. If your garage door starts to compromise the insulation of your home, then it is high time for a complete overhaul of your garage door. This becomes especially true when you consider that newer door models are designed with better insulation.
1. Problems When Opening or Closing
Perhaps one of the most obvious signs that you have a broken or malfunctioning garage door is when it fails to open and close properly. Is the door irregularly responding to the control prompts? Or maybe it moves up and down in awkward, inconsistent motions that lack the smoothness you expect from a fully functional garage door? Perhaps, worst of all, it might just fail to operate altogether.
In the most ideal scenario, your garage door should take no more than a second to respond once you pushed the buttons on your opener. If it doesn’t there might be other underlying reasons, such as:
Irregular Garage Door
If your garage door brings inconsistent responses to switches or buttons, then it is mostly due to a faulty connection with the circuit of your electricity, which should synchronize with the remote control prompts.
Awkward Garage Door
If the door behaves in awkward motions, it is possible that it has faulty wiring or its coming off its tracks. If such is the case, then the door should be fixed and turned attention to immediately.
Broken Garage Door
If you have the unfortunate dilemma of your garage door being simply unresponsive, it could be a case of a broken garage opener wire, which renders the circuitry dead and your garage door unusable. In these kinds of situations, a replacement is often recommended.
Faulty garage doors can be annoying, but there is a chance that the problem will become worse if you leave it unattended for an extended period of time and procrastinate to having it repaired or serviced by a professional contractor. Likewise, a door that moves in an awkward manner due to worn tracking is only liable to providing more challenges and problems to you as a homeowner as weeks and months go on. Either problem ultimately leads to a garage door that just doesn’t work, period. No matter the case, a broken garage door should be immediately taken care of and serviced by a trained professional.
2. Garage Door Shakes When Opening or Closing
Garage doors are meant to move in a smooth and steady manner, with no tremors or stops along the way. If you happen to have a garage door that is shaky, then there’s probably something wrong with either the tracking, belt, rollers, or lubrication of your garage door. In any case, you should consider a shaky garage door your door’s way of begging for help, as it needs to be repaired quickly before it causes any more serious, and frankly, more expensive problems.
If you have a shaky garage door, one of the following components could be the primary culprit for your problem.
Tracks
A garage door opens and closes with the aid of its surrounding tracks. In which the rollers at each end slide up and down as the door moves. If the tracks happen to be broken or corroded, the garage door has the tendency to shake. Broken or rusty tracks have to be replaced as soon as possible before they completely collapse and bring further problems and damage.
Belt
Garage doors are also moved with the use of belts. Which are activated by control prompts to pull the door up and release it back down as the user desires. If the belt suffers from wear, gets weak, or loses its tension, shaking might happen with each accompanying movement of the door. A failing belt should be released as soon as possible before it snaps and sends the door crashing down to the ground.
Rollers
As the belt pulls and releases the door. The rollers in the mechanism keep the side of the door aligned to the tracks. When the garage door you have become shaky, but the belt and tracks are fine, there might be the possibility that your rollers are not aligned, which can erode, corrode, and crack over time. Unless you have basic know-how on how to replace these rollers on your own, it’s in your best interest to have problems like these solved by professionals.
Lubrication
There might be a possibility that all the aforementioned parts are in good, prime conditions, but your door still shaking. Why is that, perhaps? This could all boil down to poor lubrication of the said parts. Which needs to be replenished on a routine basis. For smooth operation in the bearings within the rollers and pulleys of your garage door. If lubrication is not done on a regular basis and is left to go stale, not only will the door have trouble moving, but certain parts will also end up eroding and cracking due to the excess friction.
A shaky garage door could ultimately become a broken garage door unless the problem is fixed sooner than later. That is why you need to take action and call a garage door repair company if your door starts to shake for any reason.
3. Noisy Garage Door Operation
The smoothness of a fully functional and optimal garage door is characterized by its quietness. If you happen to have a noisy garage door, it should serve as a bad omen or a red flag for you that something has gone awry within the mechanism of your door. After all, sound and appearance are interconnected, just like a shaky garage door would show that something’s wrong with one of several parts that bring the door to go up and down. In garage doors, sound is a good indicator of the overall health – or lack thereof – of your door.
A noisy garage door is typically due to one of three culprits:
A Bad Spring
Springs are the nerves of your door’s non-reactive moving parts. When they get pinched or strained, it affects the body of your garage door.
Worn opener bracket
Brackets in a garage door opener are ideally strong in order to fulfill their role in the door opening process. Free of shakes or creaking noises. If your door creaks or shakes, then it might be due to your worn-out bracket.
Worn rollers/lubrication
As with the smoothness of a garage door. The quietness can be heavily compromised if your parts aren’t properly lubricated, or dulled and loose in either the rollers or the pulleys. If the sound is extremely displeasing, it could be a matter of both problems happening at the same time. In any case, lithium-based grease should be reapplied on the bearings of your door each year.
If a garage door gets exceedingly noisy, take this as an extreme risk as something is definitely about to snap. In other words, today’s noise has the possibility of becoming tomorrow’s failure or collapse. Before any of these scenarios happen, it is best if you prevent them as soon as you can through either a garage door replacement or repair.
4. Sagging Garage Door
When it comes to abnormalities concerning your garage doors, sagging is normally not one of the first things to cross the minds of most homeowners, as they think it’s just part of the process. Strange noises and shaky movements are thought of as primary concern (as it should), but when an open garage door slowly drops by a couple of inches, it’s generally viewed by the homeowning public as a benign quirk. In reality, though, it is a very big mistake to overlook the condition of a sagging garage door, which could indicate bigger problems that can ultimately cause danger to children, pets and vehicles if left unattended to.
A sagging door is normally indicative of the following problems:
Worn Tension Springs
If the spring gets strained, it might end up lacking the contractility it once had when it was brand new, therefore becoming ill-equipped to hold the door at the right height.
Dulled Rollers
As the garage door goes up and down on the daily, it is very much susceptible to wear and tear, especially in the edges of the rollers. This becomes especially true for rubber rollers, which are meant to be replaced once every few years to ensure utmost functionality. Once these rollers are dulled, they can lose their fitting within the tracks and end up sagging the weight they carry.
Dulled Tracks
Sooner or later, tracks give way to the counsel of time. Along certain lengths of the tracks, the edges have the tendency to bend slightly outward and lose their ability to hold the door in place. In addition, dulled rollers can wear at the inner tracks with the aid of repeated friction.
There’s also the odd chance that your door could be improperly balanced within the tracks, causing it rise and lower at a crooked angle. If you want to inspect if your garage door is indeed crooked and you have an actual sagging problem on your hands, disconnect the door from the remote controller and manually lift the door halfway off the ground. If it ends up sagging by a few inches, then there’s something wrong with the mechanisms involved in holding your door. However, it is a must to note that any further maintenance work should be done by licensed garage door repair professionals, whether it is required to replace the rollers, tracks, springs, or install a new garage door altogether.
5. Garage Door Wavers
Whether you’re heading out or returning from home, a hesitating garage door is one of the many things that could cause delays and kill your drive. When you simply want to pull out of the garage or drive inside, even a 10-second delay could seem like an eternity. The thing is, though, that your garage door should not hesitate like this, and normally, they shouldn’t even take a fifth of that time to respond to your commands. If more than a second passes between the press of the control button and the door opening, something’s gone awry with your door.
A hesitating garage door could be the result of mechanical or electrical shortcomings, including the following:
Broken Garage Opener Cords
When the cords that are responsible for lifting and releasing the door become strained and unreliable, the result is that you won’t be able to get any smooth performance from the garage door.
Corroded Pulleys
If the bearings of your garage door corrode, come loose, or even fail to turn the pulleys properly, the door becomes liable to hit some snags going up and down.
Bad Rollers
Once again, rollers don’t single handedly make the garage door move, but they definitely can cause hindrances to the opening and closing of your garage door if they’re not in adequate shape.
It could also be that the circuitry in the remote control has been worn down, impairing the ability of your garage door to receive signals whenever you push the control button. In situations like these, it’s definitely high time for you to switch to a new control system. Otherwise, the problem could be corrosion or wear of one of the parts to the point where the entirety of the door fails to move properly. Whatever the cause may be, it is best to call a garage door professional to inspect your door and fix the problems before it gets worse.
6. Chipped or Broken Areas of Garage Door
Out of all the sections of the exterior of your home, the garage door is second only to the rood in the amount of abuse it puts up with from the elements and external factors the world has to offer. Though the garage door doesn’t exactly bear the brunt of rain, snow, hail, or falling objects like the roof does, it does get plenty of objects thrown its way due to the playground function driveways have to offer. The garage door is also a ripe target for the teeth and claws of canines, who just might smell something sweet or savory from the inside.
As a consequence of all this abuse, a garage door can chip away and slowly come undone in the following places:
The panels
This is one of the most obvious targets. Whenever a child throws a ball or hail tilts sideways, the wood of your panels get pecked and the paint of your door gets chipped. If the driveway also features a basketball hoop, then hits to the door are fairly inevitable.
Bottom Rubber Lining
Though it does serve as a buffer for the bottom panel of your garage door, the constant touch-downs of the door upon the concrete eventually lead to taking their toll on the actual rubber, which could fray or come loose in certain locations. It is also a very plausible target for clawing dogs.
The Edges
Of course, it isn’t a secret that wood is not invincible, and it can start to prove wear and tear at the edges through constant movement along the tracks as the busy days of your garage door opening and closing turn into years.
Window panels along garage doors are an especially inviting target for the ravages of light and heavy impacts alike. Regardless of what material gets chipped or cracked, these slight bits of damage do not amount to a completely unusable and dysfunctional garage door. That is, of course, providing that you have the damages serviced before it spreads and renders the door in a condition beyond repair. Don’t wind up with a broken garage door, have a garage door professional touch up yours every few years.
7. Loose or Broken Garage Door Cords and Wires
Garage doors don’t simply start defying the law of gravity the moment it’s prompted to rise off the ground. This is an elaborate internal mechanism, working hard to lift your door. Whether it’s merely a foot off the ground or fully open, it’s being constantly supported by cords and powered by wires every inch of the way. Once the cords turn frayed, the support becomes weaker. If the cords or wires end up snapping, the entire mechanism of your garage door fails and a replacement becomes the only viable option.
The following problems are often responsible for the popularity of search strings like “garage door broken” and “replace garage door” on Google:
Broken Garage Opener Cords
The weight and mass of a garage door is often supported by the cords in the mechanism. When these fray, the door sags, and when the cords snap, the door ends up crashing down on vehicles, animals, and even people.
Broken Garage Opener Wires
The mechanisms that make it possible for a door to rise and come back down automatically are powered by electrical wires and intricate circuitry. If a wire gives out, the entire circuitry dies and the remote control system has to be replaced.
Broken garage opener cords can prove to be especially dangerous, because you never know when your garage door just comes crashing down from snapping. If your door is starting to show signs of unreliability, the cords have to be inspected and replaced by a professional garage door replacement and repair contractor. Likewise, broken garage opener wires can render your remote control completely useless, and force you to manually raise the door each time you want to park. For obvious reasons, these issues need to be corrected.
8. Bent or Broken Garage Door Track or Hinges
In the overall makeup of a garage door, the tracks are primarily responsible for keeping your doors aligned properly along the edges as the door moves up and down. This way, the cables can conveniently and efficiently pull the door in a 45 degree angle that aligns to the ceiling of your garage whenever it opens, without the need to double the height to accommodate space for the raised door. Hinges are also important in this process, as they allow the door to fold over the angle between the front and ceiling of the garage.
Broken garage door hinges and tracks can lead to the following problems:
Uneven Garage Door
Have you observed that your garage door has a slight dip on one end when it raises and lowers? Perhaps this may be due to the tracks being dented on one side, therefore rendering it incapable of supporting the door properly. You might also need to replace garage door rollers along that side or both, since bad tracks have the tendency to wear at rollers and vice versa.
Garage Door Not Folding
If the hinges of your door corrode, they could have trouble contracting, thus making it difficult for your garage door panels to fold over the angle. Rusty or Partially broken door hinges can also cause creaking or squeaking noises as the garage goes up and down.
Broken garage door tracks and hinges make it impossible for the door to fully open or close, whether mechanically or manually. Even if the problem only causes a slight gap in the bottom when the garage door is shut, you’ll still want to get it fixed as soon as possible. A cracked garage door creates a leeway for coldness and other elements, not to mention pesky rodents and snakes.
9. Rising Utility Bill
When a garage door is neither open nor in motion, it’s supposed to seal your garage as tightly as a solid wall. This is very important for a garage door, as the seal keeps out the elements of the outside environment especially during the winter months, which could affect the entire house. Simply put, the garage door – as the largest moving part of the house – plays a very important role in household insulation. If there’s even a slight gap present at the bottom or edges while the door is shut, the door is not doing its job as it normally should.
A garage door that fails to be air–proof comes with the following consequences:
Colder Winters
During the months of wind, rain, hail, and snow, the house should be as snug and warm as possible. Nothing can undermine this more than a garage door that has a gap on the bottom of the edges. When a garage door is insufficiently sealed, the warm air leaks out and the coldness seeps inside.
Higher Utility Costs
When a garage door compromises the insulation of your home, you become forced as a homeowner to turn up the heat as a means of compensation. This results in a toll in your utility costs, which can add up over months and years.
Brooks Garage Door Service Provider
Are you looking for a reliable garage door installation and replacement contractor in Nashville, TN? Well, you don’t need to look any further. Call us here at Brooks Garage Doors now! We assure you 100% customer satisfaction, free estimates for new installations, and a full-coverage warranty.
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STE 500 Nashville, TN 37206
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