With spring just around the corner, many homeowners want to improve their home’s exterior features. Winter can be particularly tough on garage doors, with ice, salt, hail, and other elements causing dents, chips, and other signs of wear. So when temperatures start to rise, it’s a good idea to give your door some added TLC. Here are a few garage door repair and maintenance tips you can use to enhance the overall look of your home’s exterior.

How to Get Your Garage Door in Top Shape for Spring

1. Do a Thorough Cleaning

To accurately assess the condition of your garage door, start with a clean surface. Using a sponge or soft brush along with mild liquid soap and water, thoroughly clean your garage door. Don’t just go over the exterior. Make sure you also clean the rails, so your door can easily open and close without backed up dirt and debris getting in the way.

2. Invest in a Professional Inspection

Then you can ask a professional garage door maintenance professional to visit your home to perform an inspection. During this process, they should look at all of the door’s panels, hinges, rollers, springs, and any other necessary components. If they determine that any of these areas require repairs or adjustments, they can provide those garage door repair services.

3. Tighten the Hardware

Even if there are no signs of serious damage, there’s a decent chance that some of the hardware holding your garage panels and other components together have loosened a bit over the winter. Either you or a professional can shore up the structure of your door by simply tightening the panel hinges and the other hardware.

4. Add Oil or Lubricant

Oil or other garage door lubricant helps the springs, rollers, hinges, and bearings move around and work together without causing friction. You can find this lubricant at a hardware store, or rely on a professional to apply it where necessary.

5. Freshen Up the Paint Job

For a more cosmetic fix, it can also be a good idea to apply a new coat of paint to the exterior of your garage door. Cover the panels with an even layer to cover up any chips, faded spots, or other imperfections.

Clean the outside of the garage door with a detergent, sponge and water. Be sure to remove any stuck on tree sap, leaves or other debris. For removing stains, check your garage door manufacturer’s recommendations. Removing stains from the paint on steel doors, vinyl or wood may be different depending on the stain. Not all stain removers are usable on all materials. Rinse with a garden hose.

Open and close the door; if the door sticks, a roller is out of place or you hear straining, popping or other noises, contact your local Overhead Door Company for a tune-up.

Use a socket wrench to retighten any loose nuts or bolts on the tracks or hinges. Locate any bolts or nuts that are painted red or have warning tags on them; do not attempt to tighten or loosen these bolts. Only a garage door technician should adjust them.

To check the doors balance, unplug the garage door, disengage the door opener by pulling the lever handle and raise the door to waist level and then let it go. If the door lowers to the floor or rises up by itself, it is out of balance and needs maintenance to avoid problems in the future.

With proper maintenance, your garage door will serve you faithfully for many years to come.

The how to repair garage door spring will help they garage door openers mechanism last a lot longer with smoothly functioning operations. The repairing of these cables when they are broken need not be a difficult task if the homeowners follow the instructions carefully. The replacements of the spare parts can be bought at the local hardware store stocking the garage door openers mechanism. The new cables for garage door spring cost between 25 to 50 dollars depending on their quality and measurements. The damaged or worn out garage door spring cables can be changed with new replacements. Home repairers must carry out garage door openers or spring repairs with the garage door firmly closed to avoid triggering accidental movements.

Once the garage door spring repair is done people are advised to stand at least a distance of 15 feet away. This precaution is necessary to avoid accidental hurt due to spring breaks in faulty installations. The garage door openers cables which have stretched or slackened will cause additional stress on the motor and springs. The loose cables can be cut off at the ends to remove the slack and make them taught again. People too nervous about getting hurt are better off allowing the professional local garage repair services to take care of their garage door openers mechanisms.

There are a few tips on how to repair garage door spring that homeowners can follow. The torsion springs are the most important part of any garage door openers mechanism. Along with the spring repair professional attention is required for checking up on a number of parts of other components. The occasional services and safety checks go a long way in preventing sudden breakdowns. The torsion springs have high tension and are usually housed in special cables or external steel tubes.

The garage door openers giving continuous trouble with opening and or closures may be due to faulty torsion springs. These are usually very tightly wound and pack a high enough tension to cause physical injuries. The tension in the springs is responsible for the breakage of many a garage door opener overhead spring. The garage door openers with two springs should usually be repaired by replacing both springs simultaneously to prevent uneven load on the cables. The squeaky and noisy or chattering garage doors can be made to run smoothly and silently after appropriate repairs.