The garage door working is essential to our lives. The garage is where our car resides and it keeps us out of the varying weather elements. Most of us use this as our main entry into our homes as opposed to the front or back doors meaning if the door doesn’t function, we’re stuck. Occasionally, there are days where the door offers sluggish operation, which can generally be taken care of with a quick fix. Then suddenly comes the day when it ceases to function all together and we’re left searching frantically for emergency garage door repair. How can you prevent the ultimate breakdown? Let’s look at some basic garage door maintenance that you can perform to preserve the life of your door.
Garage Door Maintenance
There are a variety of things you need to be doing for your garage to maintain the integrity so that it functions for a longer duration and you’re not left looking for emergency garage door repair.
- Inspection. Look over the rollers and tracks to the garage door. Put yourself on a schedule to do this regularly. If you haven’t cleaned them lately or don’t remember ever having done so, this is your chance by brushing and lubricating the axles and rollers. The roller bearings can wear out. Any rollers that aren’t working in a smooth fashion should be replaced.
- Tight. On an overhead garage door, you will find the tracks which are responsible for guiding the rollers are put together by way of sections and latched to the garage with brackets. These sections need to be checked to be sure they are secure and that the hardware holding the brackets in place remain tight.
- System. Garage doors that are spring-operated use a cable and pulley system that has the potential of wear and tear breakdown in time. Any type of fraying or damage of any part of the system should be replaced, which is not a DIY job but rather something a professional takes care of.
- Safety. There are in excess of hundreds of pounds coming down with an overhead garage door and for those that have not been maintained or maintained in a poor way with an old version of an automatic door opener can be the worst safety hazard possible. There are too many sad tales of garage doors coming down and hurting or, devastatingly, killing a child or a pet who got caught under them. The modern versions of these openers have features which have significantly reduced these occurrences such as stopping automatically or reversing automatically. Things are still possible if you don’t take care of your garage door in the best possible way.
When your garage door is well taken care of, it has the potential of lasting the duration of your lifetime. But if you don’t service it and choose to neglect it, you’ll be one of the folks standing out in the snow desperately trying to reach an emergency garage door repair service.