The spring broke and the door is still up

How can you tell the spring broke while the door was open?

A spring that breaks with the door up makes the same loud bang as one that breaks with it down, but the door stays in the ceiling instead of refusing to lift. Look above the opening for a gap in the coil, then at the cables and the way the door sits in its tracks. Any of those makes it a garage door spring repair call, and the door stays where it is until the truck gets there.

What to look for, from the driveway or the doorway into the house:

• A gap of an inch or two in the coil on the shaft above the opening, where one wound spring is now two pieces
• Lift cables hanging loose down the sides instead of running tight to the drums, or a cable that has come off its drum at a top corner
• The door parked lower in the overhead track than it usually sits, or one side further back than the other
• An opener that ran, strained and quit, if someone pressed the button after the bang

Breaks with the door up are the less common kind. Fully open, the spring is at its least wound, so the steel is under the least stress it ever sees. The ones that do happen up there tend to come at the start of a closing run, as the opener begins pulling the door down and the spring starts taking load again.

A lot of garages on the postwar ranches in town stand open through a hot evening so an uninsulated steel door and the room behind it can cool off. When that door’s spring goes, it tends to go on the press of the button that brings the door down for the night.

What keeps an open garage door from falling once the spring breaks?

Not the spring. With the door fully open, the horizontal tracks overhead carry most of its weight, and the opener’s trolley, still latched to the top section, keeps the door from rolling back toward the curve. Once the door starts down, the trolley and the rail are holding back all of it. Those parts are the only thing between the door and the slab.

That is why the red release cord is the wrong pull on this door. The cord unlatches the door from the trolley. On a door with working springs that is harmless, since the springs hold it wherever it stops, and the red cord routine after a power outage is written for that door. Here, unlatching it takes away the one part keeping the door in the ceiling. Whatever share of the bottom section already hangs past the curve starts pulling the rest along, and a door with no counterbalance comes down the vertical track as fast as its own weight takes it. A sixteen-foot steel door runs 150 to 250 pounds.

Can the opener bring a door down on a broken spring?

Sometimes, once, and that run is usually how the bill grows. An opener is built to steer a balanced door, not to brake a full-weight one on the way down. Run it now and the motor, the drive gear and the trolley are lowering everything the spring used to carry. Unplug the opener, or switch off its breaker if reaching the plug means standing under the door.

The drive gear inside most openers is nylon, and a full-weight door strips its teeth. That stripped gear is the garage door opener repair that most often follows a broken spring. The rail can bend where the trolley rides it. Some openers sense the strain and stop partway, which leaves the door hanging lower in the opening than it started, held by the trolley alone.

Worse is a cable that left its drum when the spring let go. The door then comes down with one side still on a cable and the other slack, so it drops crooked and can twist its rollers out of the track on the way. A cable off its drum is not always visible from the floor.

Why is a door stuck open on a broken spring riskier than one stuck closed?

A door stuck closed on a broken spring is dead weight on the floor, and it can’t fall any further. A door stuck open is the same dead weight held overhead, and the next touch can start it moving, whether that is a tug on the red cord or a button pressed from the kitchen. Keep people, pets and the car out from under it until the truck has secured it.

So the garage stays open until the truck arrives. Closing it is the one thing that can’t be done safely by hand or by motor with the spring gone, and a garage open for a few hours is a smaller problem than a door on the slab, or on someone. If the car is outside, leave it parked out of the way. If it is in the bay, it is better left there than backed out under the door. Anything else you need from the garage can come through the house door or a side door, walking along the wall instead of across the opening.

Kids and dogs are the harder part. A door hanging open with its cables loose looks like nothing is wrong, and a red handle hanging from the ceiling is the kind of thing an older kid pulls to see what it does.

What does the repair truck do first with a door that is up?

Before anything else, it makes the door unable to move in the tracks where it sits, so the work over the opening happens with nothing above it that can come down. A garage that can’t close is the kind of emergency garage door repair call that goes to the front of the schedule, and most of those in town are handled the same day.

After that it is an ordinary broken garage door spring job, done the way the spring page describes. The door is lowered only once it has springs that can hold it. If anyone ran the opener after the bang, its gear and trolley get a look before it is asked to move the door again.

What does it cost when the spring broke with the door open?

The spring work costs what it would with the door down, $180 - $280 for a single torsion spring and $220 - $400 for the pair on a two-car door. Opener repair at $85 - $225 comes into it only if the opener was run after the break and the gear or trolley took the damage, and a pair of lift cables at $150 - $250 only if a cable came off its drum. All four ranges are on the page for what spring and cable work costs, and the written figure for your door comes before any work starts.