Your garage door spring doesn’t work forever, though we wish it would. They tend to break about 10 to 15,000 cycles depending on the type of torsion spring you have. For Single springs, the life expectancy is usually 7-10,00 cycles, dual springs up to and around 15 thousand cycles, and high cycle springs can last up to 40,000 cycles. That equates to about 10-15 years of usage on your garage door springs. It really depends on not just the type of spring you have to be also how much use your garage door gets. Some use their garage door as their front door, so the garage door springs get more use per day. If you feel it helps you in explaining to your garage door technician what part is broken or if you plan to try to replace the garage door spring yourself ( which we don’t recommend unless you have the right tools and are good at home repairs) we are going to explain how to measure your garage door spring.
Now when you see a broken garage door spring, there is usually about a 2-inch gap between the pieces of spring. It is easy to confuse as to whether include the gap or not in your measurements and answer to that is you do not include the gap.
How to Measure Your Garage Door Spring
You will need Tape Measure.
There are three measurements you will take:
- Length
- Inner Diameter Size
- Wire Size or Known as Coil Wire Size
Garage Door Spring Length
There is a couple of ways you can measure the length of your garage door spring if it is still on the torsion tube. You can take your tape measure and go from the first coil to the last coil. Then measure the gap and subtract the gap measurement from the overall length. You can also measure the two sections separately and then add them together. Either way, do not measure a spring that is still under tension, as it will give you a false reading.
Garage Door Spring Inner Diameter
After that, you are going to want to measure the inner diameter of the spring. Most residential garage door springs are 2 inches, though there are occasions where it is 1 3/4. Commercial garage door springs start at 2 5/8.
Wire Size
The next measurement you want to take is to take your tape measure and put it at the end of the coil. Stretch your tape measure out and count 20 coils and see what the length of that is. The amount of 20 divided by the length will help give you the wire size. You will get a fraction, which you will convert to a decimal. We have broken down some of the common ones for you.
Though this is not super complicated, unless you have some handy person-type skills, it really is best to call a professional to replace your broken garage door spring. Spectrum Overhead Door LL has been fixing garage door springs in Houston since 2006 with award-winning service. We treat our customers the way we would like to be treated and have the knowledge and skills to get the job done right the first time. If your garage door spring is broken and you are in the Houston area, give us a call 281-748-9542 to schedule your appointment.