How Does a Garage Door Work?
The functioning of a garage door is something a lot of people take for granted. All they know is when they press the button on their remote, the garage door opens or closes. They may know that a spring is somehow involved, but that’s it. So, how does a spring-loaded garage door work?
Most of the time, you don’t really need to know. However, when something goes wrong with your garage door, a little knowledge about how a roller garage door works can be helpful, or at least comforting. Even if you’re not going to fix your garage door yourself — and most of the time, for safety and warranty reasons, you shouldn’t — it helps to know what should be happening. Here are the basics on how garage doors work.
Simple Guide to How Garage Doors Work
It’s really all about the torsion spring. The torsion spring is a tightly wound spring that has tremendous energy built up in it. At the command of the garage door opener, or when you pull on the door if it’s a manual-opening situation, the torsion spring winds or unwinds to provide counterweight to the door. This allows you to easily open or close a door that weighs hundreds of pounds.
The action of the garage door opener and the torsion spring allows a trolley to slide back and forth on rollers on a track hanging above the garage door. This pulls or pushes the door with it through use of a chain, belt or screw that moves when the opener is activated.
That’s really all there is to it. If your garage door is not opening or closing correctly, the problem is usually that a torsion spring has broken or become worn out, or the trolley has somehow jumped the track, so that the door cannot roll up or down properly. The problem could also be with the garage door opener, but it’s usually easy to tell if it is.
If you can hear the garage door opener trying to work but nothing is happening, it’s probably not the garage door opener that is the problem. Also, if you disable the garage door opener and you cannot open or close the door manually, you definitely have a problem other than the garage door opener.
Continental Door for Garage Door Repair in Washington and Idaho
Whatever your garage door problem is, if you’re in the Spokane, Washington, northern Idaho or surrounding areas, Continental Door can fix it. For more than 15 years, Continental Door has been offering the highest service in garage door repair and installation, and we’re happy to put our knowledge to work for you. If you have any problem with your garage door at all, contact Continental Door now.
