Confirming it in thirty seconds
Pull the red emergency release cord hanging from the opener rail, which disconnects the door from the motor. Now lift the door by hand.
- The door lifts smoothly and stays where you leave it — your springs are fine. The problem is the opener.
- The door feels like it weighs 150–200 lbs and will not lift, or slams back down — you have a broken spring.
That is the whole test. A correctly balanced garage door should feel like it weighs about ten pounds regardless of its actual weight, because the springs are carrying the rest. When a spring breaks, the counterbalance disappears and you are lifting the raw weight of the door.
If the door is currently up, leave it up and stay out from under it. A door held only by a strained cable can come down hard.
The other signs
A loud bang from the garage
Torsion springs are wound under extreme tension. When the steel fails the stored energy releases at once, and it is loud — most customers describe a bang like a gunshot, often at night. Cold contracts the steel and adds stress, which is why we take a run of these calls on the first hard freeze of the season.
A visible gap in the coil
Look at the spring on the shaft above the door opening. A healthy torsion spring is a continuous tight coil. A broken one has a clean two-to-three inch gap where the steel separated. This is the most definitive visual confirmation there is.
The door opens six inches and stops
Most modern openers have force sensing. When the counterbalance is gone the opener sees the sudden load, decides something is obstructing the door, and stops. People read this as a broken opener. The opener is working exactly as designed.
The door is crooked in the opening
More often a cable problem than a spring one, but the two are related — see below. Either way, stop using the door.
Why springs break
Cycles, not years
A spring's life is measured in cycles, not time. One cycle is one open plus one close. Standard springs are rated at roughly 10,000 cycles. A household that opens the door four times a day reaches that in about seven years; a family using the garage as the main entrance, six to eight times a day, gets there in four.
Cold
Yakima's winter lows and the wide day-to-night temperature swing in the valley are hard on spring steel. Cold makes the metal less ductile, so a spring already near the end of its cycle life tends to give up on a freezing morning rather than a mild afternoon.
Rust
Less of a factor here than in a wet climate — Yakima's low humidity is genuinely kind to garage door hardware. Where we do see it is in garages that get washed down, and on properties near irrigation where overspray reaches the door.
The wrong spring for the door
We see this on doors that have been replaced or re-skinned without the springs being re-rated. A door that has gained weight — an added insulation kit, a wood overlay, absorbed moisture in an older wood door — is now heavier than the spring was sized for, and that spring wears out early. Re-springing to the door's actual current weight fixes it permanently.
Why you should not do this yourself
This is the one repair on a garage door we will actively talk a capable DIYer out of. A torsion spring on a double door stores enough energy to break an arm or worse, and releasing it requires proper winding bars used in a specific sequence. Screwdrivers and rebar are what send people to the emergency room — the bars have to fit the winding cone exactly or they slip under load.
Beyond the tension itself: springs must be replaced in matched pairs on a dual-spring door, sized to the door's real weight, and the drums re-set so both sides lift level. Getting the wind count wrong by a turn or two leaves a door that creeps open or drops closed on its own.
Replace one spring or both?
Both, on a dual-spring door. The two springs are the same age and have taken the same number of cycles. When one fails the other is typically within months of the same fate, and a second call-out costs more than the second spring did. On a single-spring door the question does not arise.
This is also the moment to consider high-cycle springs. They cost roughly $40–$80 more per spring and are rated for 25,000+ cycles instead of 10,000. On a door your family uses as the front door, the arithmetic is not close.
Check the cables at the same time
Springs and cables share a load path. When a spring breaks, the full weight of the door transfers instantly to the lift cables — which are not designed to carry it. Sometimes they survive. Often a cable frays, jumps its drum, or snaps outright in the same event.
Any competent spring replacement includes inspecting both cables and both drums. If the cables went too, expect the job to move from the spring range into the $220–$340 band that covers cables and drum re-spooling. We quote that before doing it, not after. More detail on the cable repair page.
What replacement costs
| Job | Typical Yakima range |
|---|---|
| Single torsion spring | $200 – $280 |
| Dual torsion springsstandard on a double door | $250 – $350 |
| Extension spring pairolder side-mounted systems | $200 – $300 |
| High-cycle upgrade25,000+ cycles instead of 10,000 | +$40 – $80 per spring |
| Springs plus cables and drum re-spoolwhen the break took the cables too | $220 – $340 |
What a proper repair includes
- Weigh or calculate the door's actual finished weight rather than assuming the factory spec.
- Fit springs matched to that weight, in a pair where the door has two.
- Inspect and, if needed, replace both lift cables.
- Re-spool both drums to identical tension so the door lifts level.
- Run a balance test — the door should hold position anywhere in its travel.
- Re-test the opener's safety reversal before reconnecting.
If a quote does not include the balance test and the reversal check, it is not a finished job.