Most doors are worth repairing. Some are not. Here's how we think about the difference when we're standing in your driveway.
It is a fair question to ask, and the honest answer is that most doors that come to us are worth repairing. A garage door is a simple machine with a small number of wearing parts, and replacing a spring, a set of rollers, a cable or a panel is usually a far smaller job than replacing the whole thing.
Usually worth repairing
- Broken or worn springs — the door itself is generally fine
- Frayed or slipped cables
- Noisy, cracked or seized rollers
- Worn hinges and loose hardware
- A single damaged panel on a door that is otherwise sound
- An opener problem on a structurally good door
- A door that is simply out of adjustment and running rough
Worth talking about replacing
Replacement starts to make sense when the door itself — not its hardware — is the problem:
- Rust or rot that has gone through the panels rather than sitting on the surface
- Damage across several panels, often after a vehicle has hit the door
- A door that has been repaired repeatedly in different places
- Sections that no longer line up, so the door never seals along the floor
- A door so old that the parts it needs are no longer made
- A door you have simply stopped liking the look of — that is a legitimate reason, and it is your house
The middle case
There is a third situation worth naming, because it comes up a lot: a door where a repair would work perfectly well and last, but the door is old enough that you would be doing this again before long. In that case we will tell you both things — what the repair would involve, and what a new door would involve — and let you make the call. We are not going to talk you into a door you do not need, and we are not going to patch something we can see is at the end of its life without saying so.
What we do when we get there
We look the door over, run it through its travel, check the balance and the safety reversal, and tell you what we find. Then we agree the work with you before we start on it. If that means a new door, we measure the opening properly before anything is ordered, take the old door away, and set the new one up so it runs balanced.
