Maintaining Your Garage Door

door10Garage doors need periodic maintenance if you expect them to last for a long time. Otherwise, you might find yourself spending more than necessary on expensive repairs or replacement of your garage door or opener. Garage doors operate several times during the day. The larger the mechanical device, the faster it deteriorates with use. Although their parts were designed to last a long time, they still need to be checked once in a while for defects. Remember the following tips for maintaining your garage door.

You can take note of the condition of your garage door by inspecting for rust, loose parts, bent or broken parts, or worn out cables. Defects, like hitches and jerks, sometimes come out when you raise and lower the door. Apply penetrating oil to all mechanical moving parts of the garage door to keep them free of rust and freely moving. Wipe the excess oils clean then apply a thin film of general-purpose oil to lubricate the parts.

A household detergent can be used to wash off dirt from the inside and outside of the garage door. Resealing or repainting of wooden garage doors need to be done periodically to keep them clean and shiny. You can replace the cracked or broken weather stripping around the door yourself. Continue reading about garage door repair folsom or garage door spring repair.

If you are going to hire a professional service company to do your garage door maintenance, then you expect it to do a more thorough maintenance job. There are certain types of doors that are torsion spring operated, and this needs a professional to ensure that the spring is free from rust and is operating perfectly. Tension springs that are not well maintained may break and cause serious damage or injury. The professional service company can do a better maintenance job in lubricating chain-drives.

But there are maintenance checks you can do every month. The reversing mechanism and optic sensors of your garage door are two things you yourself can test. With the use of a long handled tool, test the optic sensor of the door by waving it between the sensors as the door lowers. If your door continues to lower, then you know there’s something wrong with the optic sensor.

Another thing you can do yourself is to test the reversing mechanism of your garage door. The test is done by placing a piece of wood where the bottom edge of the door will land; if the door reopens when it lands on the piece of wood, then the reverse mechanism is operating properly. Take note of any unusual grating or scraping sounds when the door is in operation, as it might point to a more serious problem later.

Then, check the remote controls for proper functioning.

Leave a comment