Garage Door Spring Repair in Folsom

What the Fix Involves

A spring job starts with figuring out which kind you've got. Torsion springs sit on a shaft above the door and do most of the lifting work; extension springs run along the horizontal tracks on either side. Houses in this service area span 1962 to 2004, with the typical build landing around 1981, so we see both setups depending on when the garage was framed and who installed the opener later.

The actual work means winding down the old spring under tension, pulling the shaft or cable system apart, matching the new spring's wire size and wind direction to the door's weight, and reinstalling with fresh cable, drums, or end bearings if those are worn. On a double door we replace both torsion springs even if only one broke, since the second is carrying the same cycle count and is close behind it.

We also check the cable drums and the bottom brackets while the door is apart, because a spring failure sometimes takes a cable with it, especially on older side-mounted torsion setups still found on original 1960s and 70s garages in this area. If the track is bent or the rollers are shot, we'll say so before closing the job, not after.

What It Costs

We're not going to put a number here that isn't accurate for your actual door, because spring cost depends on a few things that change job to job: single or double door, torsion or extension, whether the drums and cable need replacing too, and the wire gauge your door's weight calls for. A heavier insulated door built in the 80s or 90s pulls a different spring than a lighter uninsulated panel from the 60s.

What we can tell you is how to think about it. Replacing both torsion springs on a double door costs more than fixing one extension spring on a single door, but skipping the second torsion spring to save money usually means a second service call within a year or two, since both springs wear down on roughly the same clock. If your cable drums are rusted or your bottom bracket is bent, those get priced in separately because they're a different repair, not an add-on we tack on to pad the ticket.

Across this service area, median household income runs $97,972, and most owners we talk to would rather do the full job once than patch it twice. That's a judgment call for your household and your door, not something we'll push on you.

What Causes It Around Here

A torsion or extension spring is a wear part. It's rated for a set number of open-and-close cycles, and once it hits that number, it breaks - it doesn't warn you first. In this service area, where most housing went up between 1962 and 2004 with the bulk of neighborhoods built out through the 1980s and 90s, a lot of original springs are well past their cycle count and nobody's touched them since the house was built.

The climate here is rated moderate for heat, which matters more than people expect. Spring steel doesn't love long stretches of heat the way it dislikes freeze-thaw cycling, but repeated heat exposure still accelerates metal fatigue over the decades, especially on a spring that's already near the end of its rated life. That's different from what drives failures in colder climates, where rust and ice are bigger factors. Here, it's mostly age and cycle count catching up with a spring that was never swapped out.

Across the 28 communities this shop covers, from close-in areas like Orangevale and Fair Oaks out to Granite Bay, Cameron Park, and Placerville, the housing stock skews to that same 1980s-90s era. A door that's never had its spring replaced is simply due, regardless of which street it's on.

The Symptom

Most spring failures announce themselves the same way: a loud bang from the garage, sometimes loud enough to hear inside the house, followed by a door that won't budge or that feels like it weighs twice what it did yesterday. If you try the opener after that bang, you'll often hear the motor strain and see the door creep up an inch before it stalls - that's the opener trying to do a spring's job, and it can't.

A slower version of the same failure shows up as a door that's gotten noticeably heavier to lift by hand over a few weeks, or a door that looks slightly crooked, with one side higher than the other when it's halfway open. That uneven lift usually means one spring on a double-spring setup has already given out while the other is still holding, which is also why we replace both rather than just the one that snapped.

Don't keep running the opener once you notice either sign. Forcing a dead spring makes the opener do work it isn't built for and can strip the gears or burn out the motor, turning a spring repair into a spring repair plus an opener replacement.

Frequently asked questions