Garage Door Spring Replacement Cost

Springs are the most common garage door failure and the one people most often try to handle themselves. This page covers what a replacement costs, why the price varies, and the specific reason we tell people not to attempt it.

Those two photographs are the same door before and after. The gap in the coil on the left is what a failed torsion spring looks like from the floor — if you can see that, you already have your diagnosis.

What a spring replacement costs

The quote depends on the spring size and cycle rating the door requires, whether it is a single or double door, and whether anything else came apart when the spring let go — a snapping spring frequently takes a cable off its drum on the way. We inspect those parts free and provide the complete written quote before work.

Why springs are rated in cycles, not years

This is the part that explains almost everything about spring pricing and spring failure. A cycle is one open plus one close. A standard residential torsion spring is rated for roughly 10,000 cycles.

• A door opened twice a day reaches 10,000 cycles in about thirteen years.
• A door opened six times a day reaches it in about four and a half years.
• A shared bay under a two- or three-family building, opened ten or twelve times a day, reaches it in under three years.

That is why two identical doors a mile apart in Hudson County fail years apart, and it is why a high-cycle spring rated for 20,000 cycles or more is often the cheaper choice on a multifamily bay even though the part costs more.

How to tell a spring has broken

Three signs, any one of which is enough:

• You heard a bang. A torsion spring failing sounds like something heavy falling over in the garage, or a firework. It often happens with nobody in the room, and the door works normally until the next time you try to open it.
• A visible gap in the coil. Look at the spring on the shaft above the door. A broken one has separated, usually with a gap of an inch or two.
• The door feels like dead weight. Pull the emergency release and lift by hand. A door with sound springs rises easily and holds itself around waist height. One with a broken spring will not lift, or drops the moment you let go.

Why we tell people not to do this one themselves

We are generally happy to talk homeowners through small fixes. This is the exception. A wound torsion spring stores a large amount of energy, and it releases all of it at once if a winding bar slips out of a cone. It is the injury we hear about most in this trade. You also need the correct winding bar diameter, the correct spring for the door's weight and drum size, and the ability to balance the door afterwards — a door left out of balance destroys the opener it is attached to.

The realistic saving over a professional replacement is modest. The realistic downside is a serious hand or facial injury.

One spring or both?

On a two-spring door, both. They went on together and have run the same cycles, so when the first fails the second is typically most of the way through its own rating. Replacing one means a second call-out inside a year. There is one more reason on the older housing stock around here: if the opening has shifted out of square, the two springs were never loading evenly, and pairing a new spring with a tired one makes the imbalance worse rather than better.

How long it takes

Usually under an hour on a standard door, provided the right springs are on the truck. What extends it is the collateral — re-seating cables, re-setting drums, correcting the balance. Tell us what you heard and what the door is doing when you call and we will load the likely parts before we leave.