Straight answers about garage doors, without the sales pitch.

Your garage door is stuck. What now?

First, stop pressing the button. A door that has jumped its track, lost a spring or hit something will get worse every time the motor tries again, and repeated attempts turn a repair into a replacement. Check whether the opener has been left in manual release, whether anything is obviously sitting in the track, and whether the safety beams either side of the opening are aligned and clean. If the door is crooked, hanging lower on one side, or you heard a bang before it stopped, leave it alone and call.

• Do not keep operating a door that has failed mid-travel
• Check the manual release, the track and the safety beams
• A bang followed by a heavy door means a broken spring
• If the opening is unsecured, secure the internal door to the house

How to tell if a garage door spring has broken

A broken torsion spring is one of the few faults you can diagnose from the ground. Look at the shaft above the door: a broken spring shows a clear gap where the coil has separated. The other signs are a loud bang from the garage, a door that suddenly feels enormously heavy, a motor that strains and gives up, or a door that drops when you release it. Springs are rated in cycles rather than years, so a door opened six times a day wears its springs far faster than one used twice a week.

• Look for a visible gap in the coil above the door
• The door becomes extremely heavy by hand
• Never attempt to adjust or replace a spring yourself
• On a two-spring door, replace both at once

How often does a garage door actually need servicing?

Once a year for a door in regular use. In most Brisbane households the garage door is the front door, so it runs thousands of cycles a year. A proper service is a balance test by hand, an inspection of the springs, cables, drums and rollers, a track alignment check, and a test of the opener force settings and auto-reverse. Worth knowing: most new openers carry a service condition in the manufacturer warranty, so skipping the annual service can cost you cover. Check your own opener terms. Bayside homes in Redlands and Moreton Bay do better on tighter intervals, because salt air corrodes hardware faster.

• Annual servicing for a door in daily use
• A balance test and a safety reversal test, every visit
• Tighter intervals near the water
• Worn parts found while they are still cheap to replace

Why is my garage door so noisy?

Noise is friction, and friction has a short list of causes: worn rollers, dry or failing bearings, hardware that has vibrated loose over years of use, or tracks that have drifted out of alignment. A grinding noise usually points at rollers or bearings; a bang on start-up often means the door is out of balance and the springs are working against the opener; a rattle in the wind is usually worn seals letting the door move in its guides. Most noise is fixed during a service, and a quiet door is also a door putting less load on its motor.

• Grinding and squealing usually means rollers or bearings
• A bang on start-up suggests the door is out of balance
• Rattling in the wind points at worn seals
• Quietening a door extends the life of the opener

Repair or replace: how to decide

Repair is usually the right answer. Springs, cables, rollers, tracks and motors are all replaceable parts, and a door with sound panels is normally worth keeping. Replacement starts making sense in four situations. The same door keeps needing attention. Damage runs across several panels, or the door has twisted out of square. Corrosion has gone through the panel or the hardware. Or the profile is discontinued, so a like-for-like repair is no longer possible. One useful test: if the repair is approaching a third of the cost of a new door and the door is already old, ask what a replacement would run to before you commit.

• Repeated repairs on the same door signal replacement
• Damage across several panels is often terminal
• Discontinued profiles limit what can be repaired
• Ask for both numbers before deciding

Why your garage is the hottest room in the house

A bare metal door facing west takes sun all afternoon and gives that heat back to the garage. If the garage has turned into a workshop, a gym or an office, insulation panels help, and you do not need a new door to fit them. Sealing matters just as much. A flattened bottom seal lets storm water across the slab, along with the leaves, dust and pests that use the same gap. Insulation adds weight, so the door has to be rebalanced afterwards.

• West-facing metal doors radiate heat for hours
• ThermaDoor insulation fits many existing sectional doors
• Bottom and brush seals solve water, dust and pests together
• The door must be rebalanced for the extra weight