Maintaining your garage door is a great way to avoid expensive repairs in the future. By taking only a few minutes to check over various aspects of your garage door and its operation, you can save yourself time and money. These types of maintenance rituals can be sometimes overlooked, but can greatly benefit your garage door and extend its lifetime.
Visual Inspection
Often overlooked, many preliminary problems with garage doors can be spotted with a visual inspection. While looking over the various springs, cables, pulleys and rollers as well as the mounting hardware, search for any signs of damage or wear and tear. Are any of the cables loose? Is the mounting hardware securely attached? If anything looks out of place or odd, seek a skilled inspection by a trained garage door professional.
Door Balance Test
For garage doors utilizing automatic openers, balance is very important. If the door doesn’t lift evenly, it can cause unneeded wear and tear on areas where it may rub or bind while opening and closing. With the automatic opener disconnected, lift the door manually while looking for any signs of binding or uneven opening.
Reversing Mechanism
Almost any garage door opener created since 1993 is equipped with an automatic reversal mechanism to protect against instances of becoming stuck underneath the door while it’s closing.
To test the reversing mechanism for proper operation, place a piece of wood beneath the area where the door will close. While closing, the door should begin to retract when it contacts the wood. If it does not, the door should be serviced by a garage door technician.
Ensure Proper Force Setting
Each automatic garage door has a force setting. The garage door’s force setting is important because it protects against injury related to the door closing with too much force.
To test your garage door’s force, close the garage door while holding up against the bottom of it stiffly and carefully with your arm. If the door doesn’t begin to retract easily, pull back quickly to avoid injury and seek professional servicing.
Lubricating the Garage Door Mechanisms
Lubrication is the key to maintaining a garage door and its various mechanisms. By looking for and removing signs of rust and applying a small amount of lubricant to the various hinges, tracks and rollers, you will be able to prevent premature failure of the motor due to binding and harsh operating conditions.
This article was provided by GarageDoorRepair.com, an online resource that can be used to find a local garage door repair technician.