How To Open A Garage Door When The Spring Breaks
A garage door is a surprisingly heavy structure. So, how do you open a garage door when the spring breaks? The answer is actually fairly straightforward. Famous last words!
The common garage door opener system comes with two sets of springs. Each set is located on the outer edge of the garage door frame. These are known as side mounted springs. The provide tension lifting the garage door. They eliminate a large amount of the strain a garage door opener has to deal with when opening and closing the door. If you don’t have an opener, they eliminate much of the strain YOU have to deal with!
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Garage door springs are metal. After a relatively long period of time, they will fail. The cause may be metal fatigue or it may be corrosion. Whatever the reason, a broken spring provides no assistance whatsoever. A single broken spring is a sign all the springs are nearing the end of their life spans. This means they all need to be replaced. Of course, that doesn’t mean much when you need to get the car out of the garage to go to work.
So, how do you open a garage door when the spring breaks? The first step is to disengage the garage door opener if you have one. There is a cord with a red handle that hangs down about half way between the opener and the door. Pull it. The door is now free of the opener and will move freely.
Now to open the garage door. The problem is the side with the broken spring has no support. It will droop. If there is too much weight, the garage door may break. To prevent this, you need to first find something that you can use to support that end of the door once it is open. An adjustable ladder might do the trick.
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Once you have something, go to the center of the door like you would to open it if there was no spring problem. Now take a couple of steps towards the broken spring. Start pushing the door out. As the door opens, walk your hands towards the corner that is drooping. You are trying to find the area where you’ll be able to provide the most support to the entire door. It should be about half way to the corner.
Once the door is open, grab your support and put it under the corner in question. It can hang down a bit, but not much more than that. Get your car out of the garage and repeat the process backwards to lower the door. Call a repairman to have them come replace the springs. That is how to open a garage door when the springs break!
