Most experts say that your garage door opens and closes 1,500 times each year. In fact, this most likely classifies as the largest moving part within the home, and the more it moves, the more chances that it could break down.
You want to take active measures to maintain your garage door, and here at Cherry Hill Garage Door, we can help you with accomplishing that end. We have a team of garage door experts in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
Garage Door in Motion: Pay Attention
In the first step to maintaining your garage door, you will start the operation of your garage door. Doing that, you will want to listen for unusual sounds like scraping, rattling or grinding.
You can use the noises coming from maintaining your garage door to tell you what you need to lubricate or what component needs replacing.
We want to do this before it gets worse because of how the problem can compound itself and become more expensive if you fail to replace it.
Maintaining Your Garage Door
When you maintaining your garage door well, it will remain mostly quiet in operation. If it makes a lot of noise, that indicates a problem exists somewhere. You want to diagnose the problem and address the maintenance of maintaining your garage door to get the best results.
Clean and Check the Tracks
From time to time, you may want to clean the tracks and check them. You will find the tracks near the side of maintaining your garage door, and the door runs along this when it opens and closes.
To clean the tracks, you spray carbutetor cleaner on it to eliminate the dirt and the debris.
Important to note: Don’t use a lubricator on the tracks because of how this can dislodge the rollers and create garage door problems. We want to maintain the garage door, not have further problems with it.
Loose Hardware?
Because you maintaining your garage door a lot, this can eventually lead to some of the hardware loosening up, which can cause a lot of vibrations and other problems. Tighten the hardware up if loose as needed.
Check the plates and any screws that might loose, tighten them up. Here’s one thing to keep in mind. Never mess with the torsion spring if it is the only one on your roll-up garage door.
Working on this without the proper knowledge can lead to death, and it has lead to death because of how the spring on the garage door is under extreme tension. You need a professional to work on this.
Examine the Rollers
The rollers attach the garage door to the track. Quality rollers that you have maintained well can last anywhere from 12 to 15 years, but most manufacturers recommend that you lubricate the hinges and the rollers with oil to keep them in good condition.
If you notice a roller that looks chipped, cracked or worn, this could indicate that you may want to call maintaining your garage door expert to replace them.
Especially if you have to replace multiple garage door rollers, you may need to call a professional for the job.
Regular Lubrication to All the Moving Parts
Every once in a while, you will want to lubricate all the moving parts because of how this keeps them in working condition. Meanwhile, it also lowers the amount of stress put on the garage to put it in better condition.
You will want to do this lubrication every three months because this lowers how much stress the rollers will feel, which will keep it well maintained.
Important to note, you need to remove any excess grease that you might come upon with this job. The oil can attract dirt, and you don’t want dirt in your working components because that can quickly become a big problem.
One thing to remember, don’t lubricate the nylon rollers. You don’t want the chemicals wearing down your nylon.
Counterweight Testing
If your garage door hasn’t received the proper balancing, it might still go up and down without a problem.
However, the garage door will have to do more heavy lifting. In those cases, it can lead to the garage door wearing out prematurely. You want to actively spot problems like this and treat them. That is what proper garage door maintenance of your garage door means.
Never try to fix this on your own because working with the counterweight can be dangerous. Instead, call a professional who understands how to work with it.
While you should never attempt to fix it on your own, that doesn’t mean that you can’t test it to see if you can get it to work. How do you test the counterweight? You should see a red release cord on the automatic garage door opener.
Next, you will manually lift up the garage door halfway. When you let go of it, the garage door should remain in place. However, if it drops back down, that could be an indication that you need to call a professional to speak with them.
Do the Safety Features Work?
One of the most important things on the garage door, you have the pressure sensor, and the photoelectric system on both sides to detect anything wrong with it. To test this, put a brick underneath your garage door.
You activate the opener, and the door should reverse when it hits the break. If it doesn’t do that, the safety features aren’t working, and you need to call a professional.
Hopefully this highlights some of the things that you need to do with maintaining your garage door. The goal is to make for a better educated audience on this subject.