The Importance of Annual Maintenance for Your Residential Garage Door

Your residential garage door is a large mechanical piece of equipment. And just like any other mechanical piece of equipment, it needs regular maintenance. Without it, you could end up with some really expensive repairs. Or worse, someone could get hurt. It doesn’t make sense to risk that happening when a couple of maintenance checks a year can prevent it.

It is also important to inspect the electric garage door opener.

It doesn’t take much effort to keep your garage door well maintained. Stick to a bi-annual maintenance schedule so you can keep some money in your pocket and keep your loved ones safe.

Neglected Residential Garage Doors Are a Safety Hazard

Garage doors that aren’t maintained can and do cause accidents that should not ever have happened. Every year, thousands of incidents are reported where someone is hurt by a garage door that fails in its functioning. This just isn’t necessary.

Regular maintenance checks will prevent most accidents from ever happening. When a garage door malfunctions, it’s most often because one of these three things has occurred—failure of a component, the spring system has become off-balanced, or the automatic reversal systems need recalibrating. These are all things that would be discovered during routine maintenance checks if you’re doing them.

Set Yourself Some Reminders

You can put your maintenance checks on a schedule and set reminders in your phone or some other type of calendar so that you don’t forget. Most garage doors only need to be checked twice a year. Set one reminder for just before it turns warmer and one just before it turns colder. You’ll only need about a half-hour for the whole process.

Whoever checks out your garage door system will start by completing a visual inspection of all of the components. They will also listen for anything that sounds wrong during operation. Lubrication will be applied to all of the appropriate metal parts, and finally, the automatic reversal systems will be tested.

Digging Deeper into Maintaining Your Garage Door

Let’s take a deeper look at what should happen during a garage door maintenance check. You may want to perform these checks yourself so this should be helpful for you. But, even if you don’t want to do that, it will be helpful for you to know what to expect the specialist to be doing when he or she makes a visit to your home.

A Visual Inspection Is First

  • The inspection will start with looking over all of the components to see if anything looks broken, out of place, corroded, or just wrong in some way. Your garage door will need to be opened and closed during this process. You’ll also want to listen for things that don’t sound normal.
  • Moving parts are obviously at greater risk for wear and tear. The lifting cables should not look like they’re fraying anywhere or about to break. Is anything skewed to one side that shouldn’t be? Look up at the drum. Is it crooked or out of place? Everything needs to be in place for the system to be properly balanced.
  • Take your eyes over your entire spring system. There are two types of springs:
    • Extension: placed just above the horizontal tracks
    • Torsion: located inside a housing shaft and attached over the door
    • Is anything broken? Are the springs making odd noises?

      A garage door technician doing a visual inspection.

  • Turn on the opener and watch the rollers. Look for them to roll. Sometimes they will stop turning so that they’re sliding. That’s not what you want to see.
  • Physically inspect the hinges. Make sure there are no loose bolts. Ensure that the brackets are also secured. Look for rust or corrosion.
  • Check the external weatherstripping for any wearing or tears. This is meant to keep weather and pests out of your garage, so you want to make sure it is still effective.
  • Look for any dirt or debris that might be obstructing your photoelectric reversal system. Test to make sure it’s working correctly.

Next Is Lubrication

  • Two different types of lubricants could be used during your garage door maintenance check. There is one for the metal components and one for the weatherstripping. Metal parts can be lubricated with a motor oil. 5W30 works fine for this. Weatherstripping needs to be lubricated with a silicone-based product. It should be applied to all of the weatherstripping at the bottom of the door, on the exterior frame, and the strips located between door sections. You can find either lubricant type at TM Kenney Door Systems. Before lubricating the important parts, make sure you clean them and wipe away all old applications first.

    A garage door technician showing how to lubricate hinges.

  • METAL PARTS:
    • Spring system: apply a small amount, wiping away excess
    • Rollers: a little oil in the ball bearings
    • Hinges: apply at the junction
    • Tracks: apply to curve of the track and in the horizontal track
  • WEATHERSTRIPPING
    • Exterior frame: all the way across the interior side of strip
    • Between door sections: all across strip between each section of door
    • Bottom of the door: apply to all of surface area

Finally Test for Safety

  • The biggest thing here is to test the two automatic reverse systems that trigger the door to open back up when something crosses the threshold of the garage. You should actually be testing these every month.

    A garage door expert testing the automatic reverse systems of the garage door.

  • Testing a mechanical reversal system is easy. Place a wood block on the floor underneath the garage door. Then use the remote to close the door. When the door touches the block, it should reverse itself and return to the open position.
  • The photoelectric reversal system isn’t hard to test either. Use the remote to close the garage door. While the door is in motion, wave your foot past the photo-eye sensor. The door should reverse and open back up all the way.
  • WARNING: Should your automatic reversal system test fail, you need to contact TM Kenney Door Systems right away. This is the type of malfunction that can result in someone getting hurt, so we need to get this taken care of as quickly as possible.

Maintaining a garage door is something that isn’t hard, but frequently gets overlooked. Don’t wait for something bad to happen to start scheduling maintenance checks for yours. You can avoid anything like that by just taking a little initiative.

Want Some Help?

Great, we’d love to help you! We’re more than happy to perform your routine maintenance checks whenever works for you, as well as taking care of any problems with your garage door system that we uncover. We can make appointments to fit any schedule. Contact us at 631-589-4078. We’ll discuss a tune-up service that will work for you. We’re experts who specialize in all things garage!

We can also send you a quote by email for any of the services you would like to enquire about. We’re here for whatever you need.

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