Garage Door Repair Can Be Avoided With Proper Maintenance

Do you follow the fire department’s recommendation to replace the batteries in your smoke alarms when you adjust your clocks for daylight savings time? How often do you perform, or arrange for preventive maintenance to be done on your garage door?

Your garage door and the garage door opener have certain inspection, testing, and maintenance requirements that should be addressed a few times a year. This is required for safety and to reduce the chance of needing an expensive garage door repair.

Most of the moving parts such as rollers (except nylon rollers), hinges, springs, chains, and jack screws need lubrication. The alignment of the tracks should be checked, and the security of all nuts and bolts should be ensured.

The operation of the safety features should also be checked. The auto-reverse feature should cause the door to immediately stop and reverse direction if the bottom of the door comes into contact with anything during the closing cycle. The same thing should occur when anything passes across the path of the photo-electric eye .sensor beam. You will also want to be sure that the manual release mechanism will disconnect the door from the opener.

At first glance, garage doors seem to be a fairly simple mechanism, but in reality they are one of the more complex systems in a home. Because of this, and potential safety concerns, periodic maintenance inspections by a trained garage door repair technician is recommended. With proper maintenance, you can expect to get many years of trouble free service from your garage door.