Today we are in Morristown New Jersey we have a broken garage door torsion spring on an Amarr Oak Summit 3000 garage door recently discontinued and replaced with the Hillcrest 3138. After inspecting the door you can see a clear break in the coils of the garage door torsion spring.
The homeowner also recognized the break and that prompted her to call us. Most of my customers find out they have a broken spring when they go to operate the door and it only comes up a few inches and then stops. This is the opener noticing that something is wrong and the door is too heavy.
Garage door openers are not made to open garage doors that have a broken spring, without that spring there is no help lifting that door it is just dead weight. The only option is to replace the spring with a new spring, torsion springs generally last 8 to 12 years with normal usage. These homeowners use their garage door as their main entry and exit point to the home so the springs have broken a little sooner than that, but not out of the realm of what is expected based on the usage of the door. The torsion spring acts as a counterbalance to lift the door. It is located on a bar going across the header above the front of the garage.
We noticed the cables were hanging off the sides. Many homeowners call us thinking they have broken cables but in reality it is a broken torsion spring. On a door with one spring when it breaks there is nothing to hold the cables on the drums anymore and often times the cables will come off the drums and be left hanging after a spring break. These cables after being inspected are in good shape and do not need to be replaced; this homeowner just needs a new torsion spring.
We stock several common sizes of torsion springs on all our trucks to allow us to take care of the repair in one visit. Occasionally a door will have an unusual spring that we will have to order and return, usually within the next day or two depending on availability. Luckily this repair was able to be completed with one of our stock springs. Our customer was happy to have her door back in working order.