Our Garage Door Repair & Service Offerings

A garage door spring is the single part that makes the door light enough to lift by hand. When it breaks the door becomes dangerously heavy, the opener strains against a load it was never built to move, and usually the door will not open at all. Seattle is hard on springs in a specific way: most garages here are detached, unheated and open to a wet alley, so the coils sit in damp air from October through April and rust from the inside out long before they reach their rated cycle count.

We replace torsion and extension springs with the correct wire diameter, inside diameter and cycle rating for the actual weight of your door, measured on site rather than guessed from a model number or a chart. Both springs are replaced together, the door is re-balanced, the cables are checked for even tension and the opener travel limits are reset, so the operator is not left working against an uneven load.

Every spring replacement includes a full safety inspection of the cables, drums, rollers, hinges and bottom brackets, a lubrication service with a product that survives a wet climate, and a one-year parts and labour warranty. Torsion springs, cables and drums are under extreme tension and must never be adjusted by a homeowner. Most replacements are finished in a single visit because we carry the spring sizes common to Seattle's older single-car and alley-access garages.

A new garage door is a complete lifting system, not a panel that hangs between two tracks. The weight of the door you choose decides the spring specification, the spring specification decides the drums, cables and cycle rating, and the finished assembly decides which operator can lift it. Across Seattle we measure the opening, the headroom, the sideroom and the backroom before quoting, because a door even a few pounds heavier than the old one will quietly overload springs that were sized for something lighter. In older neighbourhoods this matters more than usual: a hand-built timber-frame garage behind a 1920s bungalow is rarely square, and an opening built for a much lighter door is not a reliable guide to what will fit now.

Seattle's climate adds two constraints that a door sold from a showroom floor often ignores: water and damp. The door faces rain driven sideways for six months of the year, water wicks into the bottom section through a failed seal, and any door on a wet alley sees constant humidity on its inside face. Steel sections need a proper factory finish, a bottom rubber that sheds water rather than trapping it against the panel, and hardware that will not corrode in a garage that never fully dries out. Where the driveway slopes toward the garage, drainage and grade matter as much as the door itself.

We supply and install sectional doors, roll-up doors and carriage-house style doors in insulated steel, aluminium with glass, and composite that reads as timber without the maintenance, with springs calculated for the finished weight of the new door, new track where the old track is worn, and a full safety check on completion. The old door and its hardware are removed and taken away, and every installation carries a one-year parts and labour warranty.

A garage door is the largest moving object in most homes and the only one expected to lift a few hundred pounds several times a day without complaint. It manages that because springs, cables, drums, rollers, hinges and the opener share the load in a careful balance, and that balance drifts as hardware wears. A tune-up is how the drift is corrected before it becomes a snapped cable, a stripped opener gear or a door that leaves its track.

Our 20-point service starts at the springs. We check the coils and the torsion shaft hardware, then disconnect the opener and run a balance test: the door should hold position where it is left mid-travel and need roughly equal effort to lift and lower. If it does not, the spring tension or the spring itself is wrong, and no amount of opener adjustment will correct it. Cables are checked for broken strands at the drum and the bottom bracket, where the wire bends hardest, and drums are checked for a slipped set screw or a seized bearing.

From there we work through rollers and hinges for flat spots and worn bearings, track alignment and jamb clearance across the full travel, the bottom rubber and perimeter seal, photo-eye alignment, the safety reverse force test, opener travel limits, and fastener torque on every bracket, hinge and track bolt. We also clear the moss, fir needles and grit that collect in the track and the bottom seal channel — the single most common cause of a door that starts grinding in November. Lubrication goes on with a non-gumming product, on the correct points only. Everything found is documented for you, and any component we supply and fit carries a one-year parts and labour warranty.

A door that has come off its track is a stopped door, and it should stay stopped until a technician has looked at it. The usual causes are an impact from a car bumper, a bin or a ladder against the jamb; a roller that has seized or worn through its stem; a flag bracket that has worked loose from jamb framing that has been softened by years of rain; or a cable that has snapped and let one side of the door drop onto the track. Running the opener while the door is off-track drags the panel edges along the vertical track, bends hinges and track, twists the sections and can bring the whole door down.

We begin by supporting the door so there is no load on the cables, the springs or the opener, then inspect the whole assembly rather than only the roller that visibly came out. Vertical track is checked for plumb and for the correct jamb clearance, horizontal track for level and for the right pitch back towards the rear of the garage, and the curved radius section between them for distortion. Flag brackets are re-secured into sound framing, the track is realigned or replaced, and the door is set so the rollers stay centred in the channel through the full travel without binding as they pass the radius.

Rollers are then replaced with the correct stem length and wheel diameter for your track: sealed nylon rollers run far quieter and resist the damp that seizes steel wheels in an unheated Seattle garage, while heavier steel rollers still have a place on some commercial doors. Hinges that have bent or whose leaves have opened up are replaced, and cables, drums and springs are inspected while the door is up. We also clear the moss, fir needles and grit that pack into the track channel and cause a roller to ride up and out in the first place. Every repair finishes with a balance test, a travel limit reset and a safety reverse check, and carries a one-year parts and labour warranty.

Most garage door failures are not sudden. A spring about to break, a cable fraying strand by strand, a roller seizing and grinding a track flat: each of those gives weeks of warning in the form of noise, vibration, slower travel or a door that no longer holds position halfway up. A maintenance plan exists to catch those warnings on a scheduled visit, instead of discovering them on the morning the door will not open and the car is stuck inside.

Essential covers one annual tune-up and safety inspection on a single residential door, and members receive a preferential rate on any repair plus a priority booking window. Complete adds a second visit each year, a full hardware torque and wear check, and a weather seal and bottom-rubber inspection. Commercial properties are quoted on door count and cycle duty, with quarterly visits to every door and a written record for each visit. Plans are quoted per property because door count, cycle duty, headroom and how exposed the opening is change the work involved, and all plans are month-to-month and can be cancelled at any time.

In Seattle we schedule the visits around the weather rather than around a calendar quarter. The important one falls in early autumn, before the rain sets in, and the second in spring, after the wet season has finished with the door. Every visit follows the same checklist regardless of tier: lubrication of springs, rollers, hinges and tracks with a product that survives a damp garage, clearing of moss and grit from the tracks and seal channel, a balance test with the door disconnected from the opener, travel-limit and force adjustment, inspection of cables, drums, rollers, hinges and the bottom seal, and a full safety-reverse test with an obstruction in the door's path. You then receive a written summary of what was checked, what was adjusted and what is likely to need attention before the next visit, so nothing about your door is a surprise.