DIY Garage Door Maintenance Tips

Most garage door call-outs are avoidable. Not all - springs wear out no matter what you do - but a great many of the grinding, scraping, reversing, juddering complaints we get are the result of a door that has had nothing done to it in fifteen years.

Here is what is worth twenty minutes twice a year, and where to stop.

Do this every month: the safety reverse test

Two tests, sixty seconds, and they are the ones that actually matter.

• The obstruction test. Lay a length of 2x4 flat on the floor in the door's path and close the door. It should touch the wood and immediately reverse. If it keeps pushing, the force setting is wrong and the door is dangerous.
• The photo eye test. Close the door and wave a broom through the beam near the floor. It should stop and reverse at once. If nothing happens, the eyes are misaligned, dirty or disconnected.

Both of these are legally required safety features and both drift out of adjustment over time. If either fails, stop using the door until it is sorted.

Twice a year: listen, look, lubricate

Listen first

Run the door with the radio off and just listen. A healthy door is a steady hum with no individual events in it. Rhythmic clicking is usually a roller. Scraping is a track. A single clunk at the same point every time is a hinge or a bad section of track.

Then look

• Cables: any fraying, any strand standing proud, and it needs replacing
• Rollers: chipped nylon, or a stem with visible play in it
• Hinges: cracks around the bolt holes, especially the centre hinges
• Track: dents, and any point where the gap to the roller changes
• Bottom seal: perished, flattened, or letting light through

Then lubricate - carefully

A light spray on the hinges, roller stems, springs and bearing plates. Use a proper garage door lubricant or a light machine oil.

Also worth doing

• Tighten what has worked loose. Bolts on hinges and brackets vibrate undone over years. Snug, not gorilla-tight.
• Clean the photo eyes. A cobweb is enough to make a door refuse to close, and it is the single most common "my door is broken" that turns out not to be.
• Wash the door. On steel this is genuinely maintenance - salt and grime shorten the life of a finish. Mild soap, soft brush, rinse.
• Check the balance. Pull the release with the door fully closed, lift it by hand to waist height, and let go. It should stay put. Drifting down means the springs are tired; shooting up means they are over-wound.

Where to stop

Anything involving spring tension, and anything involving the cables while they are under load. That means: torsion springs, extension springs, cable replacement, drum adjustment, and re-tensioning a door that has gone out of balance.

Also worth leaving alone: force and travel limit settings on the opener. They look like simple dials and they control how hard the door is willing to push before it decides it has hit something. Set wrong, they defeat the safety feature you tested at the top of this article.