How do I stabilize a garage door to help keep it open?
Thursday, January 19th, 2012 at
12:01 am
My manual lift (old school) wooden garage door is very difficult to keep open. It is also very heavy and quite scary, I'm afraid it will come crashing down and, at the very least, give one of us a concussion. How do I go about stabilizing it so that when I open it I can be confident that it won't come crashing down. It is the old kind of garage door with those big scary springs on either side.
Tagged with: concussion • Garage Door • old school • wooden garage
Filed under: Garage Door Opener Part
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buy new spring and cables for it,’sounds like your old spings are done and cant handle the doors weight
Get a board for both sides. It will keep it held up for you at any height….depending on how long the board is.
Replace it
A good garage door company can tune up your door for a reasonable fee. A door in good working order should open with basically one hand and stay put. A basic tuneup should run $65-85, however an old door may, and often does, have some parts that need replacing. (Rollers, cables, pulleys, etc.) This can quickly escalate costs to the $200-300 range. A good company can look it over and give you an estimate before work begins.
Most codes now require safety cables for doors with your style springs, old doors are often missing these. It’s great peace of mind, if a spring breaks in won’t wreck your car …or you, when it flies about.
Good Luck
you can try to add tension to the springs that are there. just vice grip the door open. if the springs sag down when the door is fully opened then they need some tension. the rule of thumb is that when you hook the cable end to the S hook you only pull the spring 6-8". if the springs are old you might have to go 8-10". those type of springs should have a safety cable thru them so in the event they would break they will stay on that cable instead of flying through the garage – or worse hitting someone or your car. you can even use a heave gauge cable if you have some laying around. once you got the tension correct you can try the door and see how it works. If the door still won’t stay open by itself, vice grip the door open, remove one of the springs and take them to a near by garage door dealer as I doubt if any of the big box stores would carry any that big. Just trying to save you some time. Don’t forget to take an oil can with motor oil in it and oil all your rollers and pulley wheels at least @ times a year minimum.