Tips on How to Extend the Life of Your Garage Door
One of the most neglected apparatus around any home or garage doors. This is hard to understand because garage doors are such an important item around a home or business. Unfortunately, most people who have garages take the doors that secure them much for granted. Home and business owners tend to view their garage doors at items that will last forever without problems but that’s simply not the case. Garage doors have problems and a certain life span just like any other piece of equipment with moving parts. So garage doors need maintenance done on them to help extend their useful life.
What types of maintenance do garage doors need? Here are some things that you can do to help your garage door keep working well long into the future:
Get Routine Maintenance Done On It
The single best way to extend the life of your garage door is to get routine maintenance done it. This maintenance should be done by a qualified garage door professional. It’s also something that should be done on a yearly basis. Garage door professionals know exactly what to do to keep all of the working parts on your garage door in tip-top working condition. Routine garage door maintenance will also typically catch smaller problems before they become much bigger and more expensive repairs.
Keep the Door Clean
Here is a simple step that many people fail to do. Just keeping a garage door clean will help extend its useful life. It will keep dirt off the garage door and help prevent rust and other forms of corrosion that typically break down garage door parts over time. It will also help keep your garage doors looking good. Part of keeping any garage door clean includes keeping vegetation trimmed and kept far away from the garage door. Be careful when cleaning not to get any water in sensitive garage door electronic parts such as openers.
Replace the Opener
One of the most overworked parts on any garage door is its opening mechanism. Garage doors are heavy items that tend to be really hard on the openers that make them go up and down. That’s why these parts usually fail long before the garage door itself is ready to be replaced. So simply getting a new garage door opener when necessary will help extend the life of your garage door well into the future.
Have the Springs Adjusted Periodically
It was mentioned that garage doors are very heavy items that tend to overwork the equipment that raises and lowers them. This would be even worse if not for the spring tension that helps take some weight of garage doors as they open and close. Garage door springs are only effective though if they are adjusted with the proper amount of tension on them. Having a garage door tech come to your home or place of business to adjust your springs yearly will help keep the tension on them at a perfect level. This will make the working parts on your garage door work less hard and help extend your garage door’s lifespan.
Lubricate Where Necessary
Many moving parts on your garage door result with metal moving on metal. This is never a good thing because it causes friction that will wear the two parts that are touching down. Lubricating these areas will help prevent friction and the subsequent parts breakdowns that it causes. Areas that need to be lubricated on a garage door to help it stay working well are any tracks, rollers, gears, or chains that help your garage door open and close.
Check Safety Devices for Proper Operation
How does the proper operation of garage door safety devices help extend the life of your garage door? The answer here is very simple. If your garage door comes down on your car or another object because its safety sensors were not working it could potentially cause your entire garage door to need to be replaced. Safety sensors are also designed not to let your garage door slam shut or open hard when they are being retracted. Not to mention, that proper working garage door sensors keep you, your family, and your guests safe too.
Call a Garage Door Tech at the ‘FIRST’ Sign of Any Problems
One of the biggest reasons that people have problems with their garage door operation is that they do not follow up on the warning signs that garage doors hive them before they have a severe breakdown. This includes such things as squealing, grinding or the garage door hitting the floor hard when it closes. Never ignore warning signs such as these because doing so may make what was only a minor garage door problem into a much bigger and more expensive garage door repair.