I know I have seen this on here before but can not seem to find it, so can someone please help me out.
Our garage door seems to only be being held up by the safety cord thing, if you pull the release cord the whole thing comes crashing down like a guillotine. My understanding is that if the spring is working right it should either hold up the door, or cause it to slowly go down, but never slam down hard. Is this correct?
We are renting our home, and our landlords claim that I am mistaken and that that is how garage doors work. They are sending out a maintenance person later today to look at some other things that are broken and I would like something to show him to back up that this is not a safe garage if I am correct that it is not.
TIA
Sorry , I forgot to put that it is an automatic door.
I can get it to go up and down when the safety cord is on. But the spring does not even look connected to the frame/wall at all. I have the safety cord pulled right now, so that it has to be manually raised that then held up by a long board.
I really do not know how they are suppose to work I just know that this one seems dangerous to me, but maybe I am overreacting.
You need new springs. It sounds like yours is broken. You should also have 2 springs on there, if you dont you have an old door! DO NOT try to fix it yourself, its very dangerous. You need a tech to come and replace the springs and balance it (which means 'make it so it doesnt crash down when you let go)
My ex was a garage door tech so I know a lot about garage doors!
Well it was a different maintenance guy then they had here last time and this one seemed to know what he was talking about. He is having someone come Monday to fit the garage. He took one quick look at it and said "Yup that is definitely broke.
I can see where a second spring might go, but right now there is one spring that goes about halfway across the top of the door. It looks like it does attach at he middle of the door but is not attached at all at the side. The maintenance guy said the thought that it just came loose and might just need reattached instead of replaced, but I am guessing that would be up to the person coming on Monday to repair it.
Its super dangerous to rewind springs, especially old ones, so usually they dont do it (unless they are stupid). They easily break if rewound.
I'd recommend getting a new one, that way you wont have the same problem.
BTW new springs only cost $10-$20 for the garage door companies to buy them, but my ex charged $2-300 to replace them. If you are paying, defiantly haggle on the price b/c its common practice to jack it way up depending on how nice the persons house/car looks!
Years ago we rented a townhouse in Lakewood, CO. I had pulled my car in the garage, shut the big door and closed the house. Then went back to our bathroom. Then all of a sudden I heard a loud crash. I went out to the garage to find the spring had broken and flung forward. Hit my car and a steel cabinet we had in the garage. Put a huge dent in it. I hate to think if I had been standing there. It was just a matter of seconds by the time I closed the doors and went to the back of the townhouse.
Needless the say our Landlady was totally freaked.
Called a garage door company and they were out that afternoon. Replaced both springs.
The landlords were suppose to call to have someone come out yesterday to look at it and fix it, but no one has come by as of yet. We have some parking outside our building and we are using that for now. If no one comes by tomorrow afternoon I am going to have DH call and bug the landlords again, they are really good at being slow.
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