If you’re a home or business owner looking to get the absolute most out of major structural components like your garage door, you know the importance of routine tests and checks. Even if certain areas of a given garage door seem like they’re doing just fine, there may be signs of issues that are a bit tougher to notice during day-to-day operations – and periodically checking the major parts of the door will help you pick up on these.
At Crawford Door Sales, our garage door service and repair specialists can help you with any and all such tests, including some that can often be performed on your own with the right basic precautions. One such test relates to the balance of your garage door – why is this an important factor in garage door lifespan, and how do you go about checking it?
Why Balance is Important
In certain cases, the reasons why balance is important for your garage door will be visibly or audibly obvious: The door will shake or wobble while in use, or might make several different kinds of strange sounds as it puts more weight on one side or the other of the tracks.
In other situations, though, these kinds of easy-to-spot signs won’t be available. Your garage door could be having balance issues without you even knowing about it. And while these may not impact you right that second, they absolutely could over the life of your door – unbalanced garage doors wear down the tracks and other components of a garage faster, meaning you’ll have to replace the door sooner. They also can lead to safety concerns if they aren’t addressed in a timely manner.
Our next sections will go over how to test for balance, and what to do if the test shows issues.
Manual Lift
To start with, close your garage door and then disconnect your automatic garage opener (if your home or business has one). From here, you’ll need to lift the door manually. If you’ve never done this before, don’t worry – the door is heavy, but it’s designed to lift easily along the tracks with little resistance based on the springs providing most of the power.
As you open the door, pay attention to whether the garage door remains open on its own once you slide it up. If not, this is a potential sign that your balance is out of whack.
Manual Close
If everything is fine with the manual lift of your garage door, now it’s time to reverse this and close it in the same manner. You’ll need just a little bit of strength to start the door moving back downward, but you shouldn’t need to force things too hard. At the same time, the door should be moving back down the tracks smoothly and at an average speed – if it speeds down the tracks and thuds onto the ground before you can stop it, this is a clear sign that balance is an issue.
What to Do if Balance is Off
If your garage’s balance is off, you should call our pros about repair immediately. We do not recommend that home or business owners attempt to adjust springs or perform balancing techniques without proper training, as this is both unsafe and could potentially damage the door.
For more on how to check your garage door’s balance, or to learn about any of our garage door products or services, speak to the pros at Crawford Door Sales today.
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