How to Avoid Costly Garage Door Repairs With Maintenance
As a homeowner, one of your most important responsibilities is ensuring that your monthly budget isn’t ruined. However, that is not going to be possible if you are costly, having to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on garage door repairs. So, what can you do about it? Avoid costly repairs by ensuring proper maintenance on the important areas of your garage door. Read on to learn the best tips for making sure your garage door remains in good working order.
Garage Door Repairs Must Include Safety Features
When it comes to safety features, it usually does not rank up there with other garage door repairs. The reason is that when it breaks, it does not directly affect the functionality of the door. However, that’s only if it stops working while it’s closed. What happens if your object sensor (sensor that detects objects or people underneath the door) does not work and your door continues to lower itself down? That’s right: Your garage door will hit your car and may be severely damaged to the point where it won’t be able to go up the tracks. This means having to call a garage door repair Long Beach company to repair the issue. With the repairs and a garage door installation project, you may be looking at a couple thousand dollars. The best way to avoid this from occurring is to simply test your safety features at least twice a year.
Tightening Nuts and Bolts
Perhaps the most common and easiest repair you can make on your garage door is tightening the nuts and bolts. Although this may not seem like it’s doing much, taking the time to tighten nuts and bolts on your garage door can drastically reduce the chances of a component suddenly falling down. For example, if enough nuts and bolts have become loose, your entire garage door could potentially come crashing down. Not only is this going to cost you thousands of dollars in repairs, but it could also severely injure a person if they are beneath the structure at the moment of the door collapsing.
Removing Debris From Your Tracks
Another tip that can easily be done is making sure that your garage door tracks are free from any debris. The fact is that because a garage door opens up so much (especially if you have multiple drivers), a lot of debris can begin building up within the tracks. Because most homeowners don’t usually look above, this debris can quickly go from being an eyesore to potentially damaging your garage door opener. How can this occur? Well, a garage door opener typically comes with enough horsepower to life up your particular door. However, when it begins to fight with debris to get your door open, it can quickly damage not only the structure but the door opener motor as well. Purchasing a new opener along with a door is no doubt a costly expense to have to pay for.
Tightening Tension Springs
One of the most common issues that you’re going to face is an unbalanced garage door. Weak tension springs often cause this issue. These springs are the components of your door that allow it to slowly raise and lower itself. However, much like other components, they are going to begin to show their age after so many uses. Because of this normal wear and tear, your door may become unbalanced. If you allow your doors to remain unbalanced, they could eventually start damaging other parts of your garage door and could even lead to your tension springs snapping. It is never a good idea to tighten your tension springs on your own. This is because they hold so much tension that one spring snapping can cause severe injuries and even death. Instead, a professional must take care of this maintenance task.
Protecting Your Weatherstripping During Garage Door Repairs
No matter where you live in the country, it’s likely that you are going to experience some severe weather from time to time. This is why it is so important to ensure that you are repairing or at least keeping an eye on your weather-stripping. This the rubber material that runs along the bottom of your garage door and on the sides of it. Its job is to keep everything from water to debris outside your garage. Failure to maintain this area can quickly lead to everything from your garage door frame being damaged to the foundation around your garage becoming unbalanced. It’s safe to say that you don’t want to have to spend thousands of dollars on frame and foundation repairs compared to weather-stripping maintenance that often costs less than $100 to repair.
