How to Tell If Your Garage Door Spring Is Broken
A broken spring is the most common reason a garage door stops lifting. Here is how to identify one from the ground, why you must not try to lift the door, and what replacement costs.
If your garage door suddenly refuses to lift, makes a loud bang from inside the garage, or feels impossibly heavy when you try to raise it by hand, a broken spring is by far the most likely cause. Springs do the actual lifting on a garage door — the motor only guides it — so when one fails, everything stops.
The six signs, from the most obvious down
You can check all of these from the ground without touching anything under tension.
- You heard a bang. A snapping torsion spring sounds like a gunshot from inside the garage. Plenty of people phone us thinking something fell off a shelf.
- There is a visible gap in the spring. Look at the long spring on the shaft above the door. An intact torsion spring is a continuous tight coil. A broken one has a clear two-to-five centimetre gap where it separated.
- The door only lifts 15 centimetres and stops. The opener senses the resistance and gives up. This is the single most reported symptom.
- The door is impossibly heavy by hand. A balanced double door should lift with one hand once the emergency release is pulled. If it feels like 60 kilograms, it is because it now is.
- The top section is bending. The opener is trying to drag the entire unassisted weight of the door by its top panel. Keep going and you will buy a new panel as well as a spring.
- The cables have gone slack or jumped off the drums. When spring tension disappears, the cables have nothing holding them taut.
Why the door suddenly weighs so much
A sectional garage door weighs between roughly 60 and 150 kilograms depending on size and material. The springs are wound to store almost exactly that much energy, so the door feels nearly weightless through its travel. The motor is only there to push a balanced door along — a typical residential opener is rated to pull about 500 newtons, nowhere near enough to lift a door on its own.
Remove the spring from that equation and you are asking a device built for guiding to do the job of lifting. It cannot, and trying will destroy the opener’s gears long before it lifts the door.
Torsion or extension, and why both get replaced
Two systems are common in Perth homes.
Torsion springs sit on a steel shaft above the door opening and are the standard on sectional and panel-lift doors. They are the safer design and the more common failure.
Extension springs run along the horizontal tracks either side of the door and stretch as it closes. They are typically found on older tilt doors. If yours has no safety cable running through the centre of the spring, that is worth fixing regardless — an unrestrained extension spring becomes a projectile when it lets go.
Either way, springs are replaced in pairs. Not because it is a better sale, but because they were installed on the same day and have gone through the same number of cycles. A typical residential spring is rated for around 10,000 cycles, which is roughly seven years at four uses a day. When one has reached the end of that life, the other is days or weeks behind it. Replacing one means paying the labour twice.
What you must not do
This is the part of the article that matters most.
A wound torsion spring stores enough energy to break bones and has done exactly that to people who thought a pair of screwdrivers would hold it. The winding cones, the cables, the drums and the bottom brackets are all under that tension, and it releases instantly and without warning.
There is no safe DIY version of this repair. Winding bars, a properly secured shaft and knowing the correct number of turns for that specific door are not optional extras.
What you can safely do: pull the emergency release cord so the door is disconnected from the opener, leave the door closed, and keep everyone out of the garage. If the door is stuck part-open, do not walk under it.
What it costs
Indicative Perth prices, confirmed on site before any work starts:
| Repair | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Single torsion spring replacement | $220 – $320 |
| Pair of torsion springs | $320 – $480 |
| Extension springs (pair) | $200 – $320 |
| Springs plus cables and rollers | $420 – $650 |
Larger and heavier doors, high-cycle springs and awkward access push these up. The figures assume standard residential hardware; a double timber door or a commercial unit is a different conversation.
How long it takes
Most spring replacements are done in 45 to 90 minutes on site. The work is unwinding what is left of the old spring, fitting the correct replacement for the door’s weight and drum size, winding it to the right tension, then balancing and testing the door through its full travel. A properly balanced door should stop and hold at any point you leave it.
Do not wait it out
A door with a broken spring is not a door that works slightly worse. It is a door that either does not move, or moves under the control of an opener that was never designed to hold it. Every attempt to force it strips a few more teeth off the drive gear — which is how a spring job turns into a conversation about repairing or replacing the motor.
If your door will not close rather than will not open, the cause is more likely to be a sensor or track problem than a spring — that is a different diagnosis.
Get it fixed today
We carry the common spring sizes on the van, so a broken spring is usually a single visit. Phone us, tell us roughly how wide the door is and whether it is a roller or a sectional, and we will arrive with the right parts. No call-out fee, a fixed price before we start, and a 12-month warranty on the work.
Rather someone just fixed it?
We repair garage doors across Perth the same day you phone, with no call-out fee and a fixed price agreed before any work starts.