It usually happens at the worst time. You’re heading out the door and the garage won’t budge, or you hear a bang from the garage in the middle of the night. Nine times out of ten, that’s a torsion spring letting go. Here’s exactly what’s happening, what to do in the next five minutes, and why this is one repair you should leave to a tech.
What the spring actually does
Your garage door weighs between 130 and 350 pounds. The opener doesn’t lift all that weight. The springs do. They counterbalance the door so it feels nearly weightless and the opener just nudges it along. When a spring breaks, that balance vanishes, and suddenly the full weight of the door is hanging on a half-horsepower motor and a couple of thin cables.
How to know it’s the spring
A few tell-tale signs point straight at the spring rather than the opener or the track:
- A loud “bang” from the garage. The spring breaking sounds like a firecracker.
- A door that suddenly feels far too heavy to lift by hand.
- A visible gap or separation in the coil above the door.
- The opener strains, hums, or only lifts the door a few inches.
What not to do
This is the part that matters most. With a broken spring, the safest move is to stop using the door entirely until a tech arrives.
- Don’t try to open it with the opener. You can burn out the motor or snap a cable.
- Don’t force it up by hand. A door with a broken spring can slam down with hundreds of pounds of force.
- Don’t attempt a DIY swap. Springs are wound under extreme tension and are a leading cause of serious garage injuries.
Why we don’t recommend the DIY route
Torsion springs hold an enormous amount of stored energy. Replacing one means relieving and re-applying that tension with winding bars in exactly the right sequence. Get it wrong and the bar becomes a projectile. Pros do this safely every day with the right tools and the matched parts already on the truck. For most homeowners, the cost of a professional swap is far less than an ER visit.
What a professional replacement looks like
When we arrive, the tech measures your spring’s wire size, inside diameter, and length to match the exact replacement. Generic springs are a common reason a “fixed” door fails again months later. We replace the spring (both, on a two-spring door), check the cables and bearings, re-balance the door so it floats at the halfway point, and cycle-test it before we leave. Most visits take 60 to 90 minutes.
