Garage door springs are the unsung heroes of the garage door system. The garage door openers usually take the credit for for lifting your heavy door, but not so; but it’s actually the garage door springs. They’re really the muscles of the operation, acting as a counterbalance to the weight of the door in order to open it with little effort.
If your garage door springs give out… or maybe the brackets holding the torsion tube in place break, it’s really game over until the problem is fixed.
So we know these springs help us open the door, but in terms of understanding the force generated by a torsion spring, you might want to consider the force caused by the torsion spring on a mousetrap. The spring is wound and locked into place until the mouse triggers it by taking cheese, and then the spring unwinds so fast that the poor critter is snapped in half. Game over for the mouse.
Let’s take this a step further, though, by just talking about the Torsion Springs (there’s another type of garage door spring called the extension springs, but that’s best left for another discussion); they’re thicker and much bigger. The force released by the unwinding is so great that a projectile chunk of a worn spring hitting you could actually be lethal and you could turn into a mouse in a much bigger mousetrap.
The above serves as a warning to what might happen if a novice such as yourself were to try and install or replace garage door springs by yourself. It’s not a scare tactic to try and drum up more business, but to alert you to the dangers that not only novices but also trained professionals face when facing a torsion spring issue.
Another thing to consider is that there are two springs, not just one; one winds to the left and the other to the right, and they’re separated by center bearing support bracket.
You might want to keep in mind that a torsion spring’s longevity and effectiveness can be affected by the humidity; the springs tend to corrode faster when they’re in humid locations.
If you have more questions about torsion springs, how they work, and when you need to change them out, contact your local garage door repair company.