Emergency repair — broken spring
Broken garage door spring: what happened and what next
Do not force the door — call us
A sharp bang from the garage followed by a door that suddenly weighs a great deal more is almost always a broken counterbalance spring. The spring, not the motor, carries the weight of the door; without it, you are lifting the full mass.
This is the failure we attend most often, and it is one of the few where we ask people to stop and step back rather than try anything.
How to tell it is the spring
Several of these together make it near-certain.
- A loud bang, sometimes heard from inside the house.
- A visible gap in a coiled torsion spring above the opening, or a stretched extension spring hanging loose.
- The door lifts a few inches then stops, or feels enormously heavy.
- An automated door strains, hums, then reverses or trips out.
- The door drops fast when released instead of holding position.
What not to do
Do not keep operating the motor. It is now trying to lift the entire door weight through a mechanism not designed for it, and you can turn a spring repair into a spring, cable, drum and operator repair.
Do not attempt to release or replace the spring. Torsion springs hold considerable stored energy even on a closed door and are a genuine cause of serious injury.
How we repair it
We secure the door, replace the spring with one correctly rated for your door's weight and cycle requirement, renew cables if they show wear, then re-balance and test the full travel. On automated doors we reset the force and travel limits afterwards.
Springs are usually replaced in pairs where two are fitted — the second is the same age and under the same load, and replacing one alone tends to bring us back within months.
Preventing the next one
Springs are consumables rated in cycles. Annual servicing catches the corrosion and fatigue that precede a break, and a re-balance keeps every other component from working harder than it should.
Questions we get asked
- Can I still open the door manually?
- With a broken spring the door is extremely heavy and can drop. If you must get a vehicle out, wait for an engineer rather than attempting it — that drop causes real injuries.
- How quickly can you attend?
- We run 24/7 emergency cover across Northern Ireland from Dromore and carry common springs and cables on the van, so most repairs are completed on the first visit.
- Why did it break now?
- Springs fail by fatigue after a finite number of cycles, accelerated by corrosion and by carrying an unbalanced door. Cold mornings often finish off a spring already near the end of its life.
- Should both springs be replaced?
- On a two-spring door, yes. The surviving spring has the same age and cycle history and typically fails soon after.
- Will the motor need replacing too?
- Not usually, unless the door was operated repeatedly after the break. That is the main reason we ask people to stop using it.
Broken spring? Call now, day or night
24/7 emergency repair across Northern Ireland. A real engineer answers, and common springs are on the van.
Based at 31 Mount Street, Dromore (BT25) · covering Northern Ireland · 24/7 emergency repairs