Diagnosis
How to Tell If Your Garage Door Spring Is Broken
Almost everyone who calls us about a broken spring describes the same thing: a bang from the garage loud enough that they thought something had been broken into, and then a door that will not open. If that is what happened to you, you can confirm it yourself in under a minute without touching anything dangerous.
Why the spring matters so much
Your garage door weighs somewhere between 150 and 400 pounds. The opener does not lift that. It could not — a half-horsepower motor has nowhere near the capacity. The springs carry the entire weight of the door, and the opener only supplies the small push that gets a balanced door moving and controls where it stops.
This is why a broken spring produces such a confusing symptom set. The motor sounds completely healthy. The remote works. The lights come on. And the door does not move, because the thing actually doing the lifting has failed.
The four checks
- Look at the shaft above the door. On a torsion system there is a steel bar spanning the opening with one or two springs wound around it. A broken spring shows an unmistakable two-inch gap in the coil. If you see that gap, you are done — that is your answer.
- Check the cables. Look at the bottom corners of the door. A cable hanging loose, or unspooled from its drum at the top, frequently accompanies a spring failure as load redistributes suddenly.
- Look at the top section. If an opener has been fighting a broken spring for a while, the top panel often bows or bends where the opener arm attaches.
- Try the weight, carefully. With the door fully closed, pull the red release cord and lift by hand a few inches. A balanced door feels like 8 to 10 pounds. A door with a failed spring feels like the several hundred pounds it actually is. Do not lift it high, and do not stand under it.
Extension springs look different
Older and lighter doors sometimes use extension springs instead — long springs running horizontally along the tracks on either side, stretching as the door closes. A broken one is obvious: it hangs slack or is visibly in two pieces. These systems are also why safety cables matter, since an extension spring that snaps without one becomes a projectile.
If you have extension springs and they are due for replacement anyway, it is worth asking about converting to a torsion system. It costs $465 to $780, gives smoother travel, lasts longer, and fails far more safely.
Why we insist on replacing both
If your door has two springs, they went on the same day and have completed the same number of cycles. The one that has not snapped is at exactly the same point in its service life — it simply has not got there yet. In our experience the survivor typically fails within about a year.
A single spring is $185 to $265. The pair is $285 to $395. Two separate visits cost more than doing both today, and you avoid being stranded a second time. We quote the pair by default and explain why rather than presenting it as an upsell.
What determines how long springs last
| Item | Figure | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Builder-grade springs | ~10,000 cycles | 5–7 years at 4 cycles/day |
| What we fit as standard | 20,000 cycles | 10–14 years at 4 cycles/day |
| High-cycle springs | 30,000+ cycles | For very heavy use |
| Heavy insulated double | Shorter | More weight per cycle |
| Coastal address | Shorter | Salt corrodes the wire |
| Garage as main entrance | Halved | 6–7 cycles/day is common |
A cycle is one open and one close. Most households average four a day. If your garage is the door everyone actually uses, you might be at seven, which cuts the calendar life nearly in half. That is not a defect, it is arithmetic, and it explains why whole streets of similar-age houses hit spring failure within a year or two of each other.
Please do not do this one yourself
We publish plenty of DIY advice, including a whole guide on fixing sensor faults for free. This is the one where we say clearly: do not. A wound torsion spring stores enough energy to break bones, and releasing it requires proper winding bars used correctly. The failure mode when an improvised tool slips is severe, and this repair sends people to hospital every year.
The spring itself is not where the cost sits. You are paying for the tools and the training to release several hundred pounds of stored tension safely. At $285 to $395 for a pair fitted and the door rebalanced, it is not a repair worth risking a hand over.
What to expect from the repair
Forty-five to ninety minutes for a standard two-spring door. We stock the common wire sizes on the truck, so the large majority of spring calls finish on the first visit. Afterwards the door gets rebalanced — which is the step that determines whether the job lasts — and cycled several times with the auto-reverse tested against an obstruction.
We also check the cables and drums, bearing plates and rollers while we are in there, because a spring failure shock-loads all of it. Anything found gets quoted separately and you decide.
Questions
Related questions
Look at the shaft above the door for a two-inch gap in the coil. That is definitive. Supporting signs are a motor that runs without moving the door, a door that feels enormously heavy by hand, and a bowed top section from the opener straining against it.
A single torsion spring is $185 to $265 installed and a matched pair $285 to $395. Extension spring sets are $145 to $245. The diagnosis is free, so you get a firm number before agreeing to anything.
You can sometimes lift it manually after pulling the release cord, but you are lifting the full weight with nothing holding it up if your grip goes. Do not park under it, do not leave it propped, and do not keep pressing the opener.
Both have the same age and cycle count, so the unbroken one is close behind. The pair costs $285 to $395 against $185 to $265 for one, which makes doing both cheaper than two separate call-outs a year apart.
It can if the opener has been fighting it. Repeated attempts strip the drive gear or burn the motor. We test the opener as part of the free diagnosis and tell you whether it survived, rather than replacing the spring and letting you discover it later.
With the 20,000-cycle springs we fit as standard, roughly ten to fourteen years at four openings a day. Heavier use scales that down proportionally, and a heavy insulated double works its springs harder than a light single door.
We would strongly advise against it, and this is the only repair where we say that flatly. A wound torsion spring stores enough energy to cause serious injury and needs proper winding bars. The part is cheap; the safe release is the whole job.
It is urgent if your car is trapped or the door is stuck open, and we hold same-day slots for both. If the door is safely closed and you can manage without the garage for a day, it can wait for a normal appointment without a surcharge.
Keep reading
More garage door guides
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Same-day service on most repairs, a flat price before we start, and no charge for the diagnosis. Tell us what the door is doing and we will tell you what it costs.
Mon–Sat 7:00am–8:00pm · Licensed & insured · Serving Tampa, Brandon, Riverview & Wesley Chapel