Eden Roc Garage Doors

Garage Door Maintenance

The garage is often an afterthought in a home. It’s not the most glamorous space, and it typically houses your car or bikes. But garage door maintenance is crucial to keeping your house safe from intruders and protecting your vehicle investment. Garage doors are heavy, they open up into the garage space where you park cars and store bikes, so they’re used a lot throughout the day – that means more chances for dirt, grime and grease accumulate on them over time.

This page takes an in-depth look into both how to perform the necessary tasks to maintain your garage door and why you should seek the professional help our our team at Eden Roc garage doors to complete a regular, periodic maintenance service of your garage door.

Garage Door Maintenance
Request Door Maintenance

What is garage door maintenance?

In an Eden Roc Garage Doors service, our technician will come out to inspect your garage or roller door. They will perform a visual check of the garage door parts, test the door’s performance, and assess the door’s safety features. They will then undertake any adjustments or repairs that need to be done, and ultimately make any recommendations as to how you can ensure your garage door will operate well into the foreseeable future.

The Importance of Regular Maintenance

Modern garage doors with remote controlled electric openers are a great convenience when operating properly, but can be frustrating and very costly if not maintained. Garage doors and their electric openers are the largest mechanical device that you will find in a household, like any mechanical appliance, periodic servicing is required. Without regular maintenance servicing (once every 1 – 2 years), the garage door set up and its various moving parts will deteriorate until it eventually breaks down.

Depending on how the garage door set up breaks down, you can be left stranded as your car is trapped inside your garage or your garage door may end up stuck open. In the worst circumstances, it can be very dangerous to anyone who may be in garage door opening as the garage door (which can be up to 120kg for a typical residential garage door) come crashing down.

Additionally, a damaged garage door can leave a home vulnerable to break-ins. When they are in working order a garage door serves as an important measure to securing one of the prime entries into the home. A damaged, inoperable garage door will not provide that same level of security.

How often should you Maintain your garage door?

The Australian Garage Door Association (AGDA) recommend that garage doors and their openers should be serviced regularly: once every 1 – 2 years.
Though, in areas where the garage door is exposed to salty air (i.e near the coast) or industrial areas with higher levels of pollution in the air, servicing should occur more frequently.

For our Eden Roc Garage Doors clients, we definitely recommend you have repairs and services conducted by our team on your garage door in this recommended 1 – 2 year time frame. We advise this as Perth’s coastal air encourages the fast build-up of rust.

Garage Door Maintenance Cost

Maintenance, with the exception of considering the added cost of replacement parts, comes at a standard call-out fee of $165.

DIY Maintenance
vs
Professional Maintenance by a Qualified Technician

As the homeowner or user of the garage door, there are a number of things you can do with basic tools to maintain the health of your garage door. This would include:

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to do alone all that is required in a full service, as the most dangerous task is the tensioning of the garage door springs. The spring is a crucially important piece of the garage door set up. If it is not tensioned correctly, it can burn out the garage door opener motor, coming at the cost of entirely replacing the motor. The spring is wound at such a high tension, that it carries a lot of elastic force within it. If that force were to all be released at once (which is very easy to accidentally do when tensioning the spring), it can cause serious damage to the person attempting to reset the tension. As such, when it comes to a few of the more dangerous tasks involved in a garage door service, they must be done by a qualified technician.

Lubrication can reduce the friction of moving parts and quieten a garage door. Always use a wet, rust-protective oil-based lubricant product. Use it to lubricate all moving parts of the garage door, especially the hinges, springs, and bearings.
Our recommended oil-based lubricants are: RP7, WD-40, and Inox

What does the technician inspect and/or repair during a service?

A garage door set up has a lot of moving parts. The technician who performs the maintenance service will check all of the moving parts to be sure that the garage door is operating as it should do. The parts we will inspect include tracks, hinges, locks, rollers, power arms, chains, lifting cables and bearings. As these are moving parts, there is friction between them which, over time, will cause wear and tear. Eventually, these parts will need to be replaced, but with regular inspection, cleaning and lubricating of these parts (which are done during a service), their general lifespan will be extended as this will reduce the wear and tear they endure.

Symptoms of a Garage Door Requiring Maintenance

While we strongly recommend that garage doors are serviced every 1 – 2 years, we are well aware of the fact that most homeowners do not do this. So, here are the signs and symptoms of a door in desperate need of service or repair:

Dry and rusted springs and cables.

Garage door springs enable a door to operate with ease and are regarded as the single most important component of the garage door. If either the springs or the cables are dry and rusted there is a danger of them breaking. If they break, the garage door will become inoperable, jammed, or lopsided. A quick visual inspection of your garage door springs and cables can save you a lot of time and money.

Rusty Cable Vs Fresh Cable
Track Cleaning

Loud, squeaking and scratching noises when opening/closing.

A garage door which is making a lot of noise could be a result of no (or incorrect) lubricant, or build up of grime and debris in the tracks, or as a result of an ‘under-tensioned’ garage door spring. You can apply the lubricant and clean the tracks yourself, but the tensioning of the spring must be done by a qualified garage door technician given the danger discussed above.

The motor chain or belt moves during operation, but the garage door stays still and does not close/open.

This is a frequent issue that occurs in many garage door openers. It is a result of a broken drive gear. The drive gear assembly drives the chain or belt and is one of the most common parts to break as a result of general wear and tear. Drive gears can easily be replaced by a qualified service technician.

Consequences of NOT maintaining your Garage Door

Simply put, your garage door will not last nearly as long as it would with regular servicing. You won’t be preventing small problems from becoming large issues which will ultimately be more expensive in the long-term, and by not servicing your door, you’re potentially creating a circumstance in which someone can get seriously injured.

While it is true that all modern garage door openers have built-in safety features that cause them to auto-reverse should it feel resistance, such as when the door is pushing down on something or someone, the sensitivity settings can be affected by power spikes, lightning, etc. To prevent this potentially dangerous circumstance from occurring, it is highly recommended that these settings are tested and reset if necessary at regular intervals. These tests are also performed by our technicians when they perform a garage door service.

Maintaining a Wooden Garage Door

Maintaining a wooden garage door essentially entails all the actions mentioned above, plus a few more.

In addition to the above steps, be sure to consider the door’s wooden finish when sealing, varnishing and oiling the wooden garage door. It is suggested that the process of sealing, varnishing, or oiling the wooden finish is repeated every 2 years to maintain the wood’s immaculate condition.
Regular maintenance ensures that the wooden garage door maintains its natural colour and does not warp.