It's interesting whenever this comes up on Reddit and there are a hundred comments parroting how dangerous this is, but on closer inspection you can see the comments cannot discriminate between important details - eg. talking about how dangerous extension springs are, having no clue that they are different than torsion springs. Always fun to see how many people will pretend they have knowledge on a subject they have no experience in.
> but the risk is comparable to doing your own car repairs
"Comparable" in that it's way, way greater, sure. Unless we're talking dangerous car repairs, like using a spring compressor to disassemble a strut &c. Or using harbor freight jack stands..
When my spring broke, I thought someone crashed their car into my house. It's an incredible amount of energy.
Garage door springs are up there with lathes & table saws, in terms of danger (IMO).
At my home country we used counter-weights, pulleys and cables. Took more space, it is arguably uglier (but who cares how it looks on the inside?) but the cable usually lasts for ages and fixing it is not a life-threatening procedure.
The reason it's not expensive to have someone else do it is that if done properly it's not dangerous. Otherwise culture would be lumping garage door repairmen with emergency responders who take dangerous jobs but keep society functioning. You couldn't get it done for $200 if the career killed people frequently.
The "if done properly" is critical, yes, if done wrong it's incredibly dangerous, but if you understand and respect it there's minimal chance of harm.
DIYed it three times now (on different doors of course) without incident.
Reminds me of the old engineer joke:
"Did you know you can save $27.00 if you build your own refrigerator?"
I've had springs replaced in the past, and that's one of those jobs I'm perfectly willing to pay someone else to do. The cost is insignificant. I'll happily wire up my own 240V appliances, work underneath my properly supported car, etc. But garage door springs? Nah, go ahead, you do it, send me the bill.
I did one on the "do it with the spring relaxed and the door up" plan. The door isn't that heavy, you can just lift it with your hand to help the opener lift it up, and done. But cramped!! Getting the lift cable nicely wound on the lift pulley, giving it a bit of preload (pull) and getting it attached to the bottom of the door, all with the raised door in the way, and doing both sides, let's just say my supply of swear words was severely depleted by the end. But I did get it done, and no dangerous forces were involved.
Whereas I saw a professional do it in about 5 minutes flat on the "wind the spring and block it and then hook everything up with the door down" plan. But that can kill you if you do it wrong.
I replaced my torsion springs a few weeks ago with little drama. The hardest part was measuring the old springs so I could order the correct replacements. The reason I did it myself was 1) the springs used by contractors are typically lower quality and will last 10k cycles vs about 30k for the standard ones I ordered. 2) I wanted to learn how the system worked so I could adjust it as needed and know it was done right and not be reliant on an âexpertâ same as why people work on their cars 3) labor costs in Seattle area are higher than most other areas. The best video on replacement is https://youtu.be/xOXO01rdZ5c?feature=shared. I used zip ties to hold the cable pulleys and open mouthed bracket in place instead of the vice grips as he did in the video. I did not weigh the door. I did it alone, though probably not recommended. I ordered from DDM Garage Doors. I wouldnât recommend Amazon vendors as they all look pretty sketch. Definitely order proper winding bars with good rubber stops to help you ensure youâve inserted it fully before each wind. If you are at all mechanical minded (replaced a clothes dryer drum? ), this is doable. Just go slow and be safe. Took me about an hour to remove the old springs, 3 days to get parts and 3 hours to install including having to repeat the winding because the cables came off during the first try. I wore gloves, safety glasses and during the winding of the springs a bike helmet and an over the ear headset to protect my ears. Probably could have used teeth protection, and a chainsaw type face shield. The dangerous part is tightening the set bolts while the spring is tensioned . If you arenât paying attention, I can see that it might be easy to bump the bar out of place, releasing the tension and potentially shooting the bolts back at you or the spring catching your gloves and fingers and shredding them.
I attempted an almost identical repair like this once and ended up in the ER. Don't do it. Call a pro.
Nobody seems to mention keeping the springs lubed for longevity. What's the groups thinking on that? I keep a spray bottle of lube by the door and shoot it every few months, which is probably overkill, but it's so easy. Then just wipe off the excess and grime maybe yearly.
Related:
I Replaced Deadly Garage Door Torsion Springs and Lived to Tell the Tale - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28419196 - Sept 2021 (10 comments)
> so if you have any doubts about your abilities to do risky physical work on your own, hire the job out like everyone else.
The problem I witness is that the people who kill or maim themselves will tell you they were confident. When people arenât confident, their brains are responding properly to the danger and it generally leads them to making good decisions.
A year ago I had a spring fail in my old/cheap system with tension springs. I was surprised to see the level of scamminess present in this particular area of repair.
After seeing that a set of replacement springs from a big box store was under $100 and wouldn't be that hard to do myself, I figured that it would be reasonable to pay an extra $100-200 just to have it done while I was busy with other things.
One guy over the phone tried to convince me that he would need to replace the entire cable system as well and lost any interest after I told him the cables were fine and the spring had failed from fatigue in the hook section where the cable was attached.
Someone else was "dispatched" from a local-sounding number and showed up with out-of-state license plates on his van. He quoted me $800 for the repair. I tried not to be a jerk and told him thanks, but I'll be looking around some more. He then dropped the price to $400, saying he'd do the job for that if he could replace only one spring. After another thanks, but no thanks he became aggressive and said that was a special one-time price that ended when he left my driveway. He later texted me with a $200 dollar price, but by then I had already arranged for someone to do a full conversion to a torsion system for about $500.
My grandfather is in his 70s and does this as his "retirement job", it's generally around $500 last I asked him...
One scam/scheme not mentioned in the article is calling the phone number on the sticker of the vendor that installed your opener. Those are very valuable advertisement slots. Call anyone but them. There's not a ton of specialization in residential garage door systems.
People think garage door springs are like diffusing a bomb. It's not that bad if you are competent and have the correct equipment.
I'll agree with Reddit and most of the posts here. It's too dangerous to be worth it.
Once every 3-7 years replacement at ~US$150-350 YMMV is honestly not that much money saved vs the risk.
I do not recommend DIYing this work, but I do recommend springing for the high cycle (20k cycles) torsion springs if offered by your installer (TLDR larger wire size and a few inches longer to optimize for longevity). They are a bit more in material cost, but will save you labor costs, which will only go up in the future. Also, depending on your living arrangement and situation, an unexpected spring failure can be annoying AF if you can't get vehicles in and out of the structure.
These doors are what we call a 'luxury problem': just more trouble because the premium door type was chosen. The single pane type door I know [0] are perhaps uglier, but they will last decades and do not need maintenance. They use normal springs.
[0] https://www.novoferm.nl/producten/garagedeuren/kanteldeuren/
If they are this bad to replace, should I be worried about them randomly failing? I mean, I drive right underneath them like twice a day backing in and out.
> Copyright 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015 Richard J Kinch
Why is 2013 missing?
I had mine fail on me a few years ago. Mine was a single spring, and after researching on how to replace, I decided that I'd rather pay someone else to take the risk.
It was around $700 at the time and the installer installed two springs (side by side) to handle a failure event with one of them.
I think the next time I have to replace my torsion springs, I'm going to install the Coplay Ez-Set system, anyone have experience with it? It has a built in tensioning system. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Clopay-EZ-Set-Torsion-Conversion...
It has a built-in winder that uses a power drill.
There are tools that will attach to the traditional winders and you can use a power drill, those tools are $800, which is a bit hard to swallow.
Good article, but the author is using low numbers for the "speeding bullet" stats. Like many jobs both around the house and industrial stuff, know what you are doing before you attempt it. But go away with the "it's too dangerous for mere mortals" speeches and special legislation to protect us all. Many people are capable and willing to do work that is hard and or dangerous. Snowflake legislation doesn't help the world work. Darwin awards work for the betterment of society.
Mine is broken and I'm waiting until I have enough savings to pay someone experienced to do it for us.
I've worked on all sorts of things, but I don't want to risk my health that recklessly.
My dad would do anything, with confidence.
This is the one thing he wouldn't touch.
Me too.
This garage door work is comparable to working on a vehicle suspension. Similar springs, similar preloading force, etc. And similar threat of death if you fuck up or do something stupid.
Nothing wrong with doing things yourself, but make sure you're following basic safety standards and procedures. And don't do stupid hacks cause the actual tools are expensive. This is how you get injured or killed.
So I recently helped my dad replace 2 of these springs. He is no engineer but used to be a firefighter and straight up told me "you don't respect the power of the spring....you will die" I don't think he ever had to respond to a call where someone died trying to do this....but I bet he had some local story of the dangers these pose growing up.
TLDR treat dangerous things with respect and you vastly increase your odds. Be it a firearm or a chemical or a fast spinning lathe.....danger can be lurking anuwhere and when you recognise it a d stop and develop a aproach to mitigate risks.....you can help elimate stupid mistakes that could really cost you.
TLDR its better to have annoyingly boring procedures than just wing it and hope it goes well.
"Phew! The hazardous torsion is all removed from the old spring. Now the disassembly can begin, with our old friend gravity as the only acceleration threatening personal safety."
Haha, also reminds me of how *"The Actions In This Video Are Performed by Professionals" became completely meaningless, because most of the time they very obviously aren't.
The author's intentionally verbose/non-linear storytelling technique, for example the two paragraph detour that describes his ladder and the ladder company's bankruptcy, and the 19 paragraph deep dive on garage door repair business marketing, makes it very hard for my brain to absorb the core information I was looking for (the procedure to replace the springs).
I know I'm kind of missing the point/creative intent of this essay, and I appreciate the non-linear full-of-detours style in other genres. For example I'm a huge fan of Norm MacDonald whose long, impossible-to-follow stories would often drive unaware audiences and talkshow hosts crazy. But for technical things I personally find the style super annoying and feeling like the author is trying to flex on how much engineering, business, and trivia knowledge he has in many adjacent topics.
I actually get anxiety thinking about getting trapped at a bar or party interacting with somebody who talks like this :-)
Curious how other readers feel about this, especially those who have the exact opposite reaction!
> This work is risky, but the risk is comparable to doing your own car repairs, or climbing on the roof of your house to clean your gutters.
I wonder what the net impact of an article like this is:
* How much money is saved by garage door owners?
* How much money is lost by professionals?
* How many people are injured/killed because this article made them think this was doable at acceptable risk, when they otherwise wouldn't have attempted it?
* How many people would've attempted it anyway, and would've been injured, but this article helped them not to be injured?
Modern bonus:
* How many people are injured because a YouTube/TikTok/etc. DIY influencer is informed by this article, makes a YouTube video that muddies the information, and people are inspired by the influencer video to attempt it?
Is there something I'm missing? A quick search of YouTube reveals tons of garage door spring replacement videos. It doesn't seem like the knowledge or parts are difficult to obtain.
Excellent example of safety third. If you know how to be careful, don't be afraid to do the job.
I respect the enormous power of these springs and leave them to the pros.
One of our garage door springs "popped" just last week. Had to recruit two of my kids to help me get the door open to back out the vehicles. Even an aluminum garage door is heavy.
I wonder if longer life springs could be made from something like chrome silicon, or if the application of force won't work that way for that material.
I have replaced these and am still alive. Apparently thats a big deal? When did we become so afraid of being responsible for our own safety?
Speaking of things you shouldn't do yourself, I should really get around to replacing that ceiling fan remote unit.
This blog feels like something from Internet hyperspace: Informative, but shitty formatting / layout. I say the latter with genuine love -- no trolling / hate. This blog post could have been posted in 1994! Can we please get more of these on HN!?
The springs become pretty safe when contained with a simple cable down the middle right?
Why are we still using springs?
i thought there were alternates to torsion spring as the mechanism to open and close garage doors by now. I guess itâs limited for residential installs
I wonder if the claims of danger are exaggerated to keep those in the business making $$$, and spread like rumours aided by the lack of information in that era. Now that there's YouTube, and an abundance of information (and accompanying misinformation, of course), the truth can come to light.
I even found a supposedly scary warning video of a spring deliberately let go, and it's... underwhelmingly tame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrUIN6hClB4
Just remember to keep your hands away from it, which is easy to do with long winding rods that should be grasped at the ends for best leverage anyway.
Proper nerd chic, that site. Love it!
this article was very effective at convincing me I would never try this myself.
yes this is dangerous ! first hand experience with a commercial rollup door. A small crowbar is used to tighten the final install, about four meters up off the ground, too.
Reading some of the comment section here makes this veteran DIYer sneer. Yaâll need to âgrow someâ and unlearn helplessness.
Pay someone else who learned the simple steps to do the simple work and save yourself the time for more productive activities, but stop congratulating yourself on âavoiding a disasterâ - too much drama for the task at hand here.
I was hoping this was going to be a new technology making these springs obsolete.
What an incredible web page design. It loads and paints instantly on any browser in existence and reflows faster than any site I've seen. The content is front and center and there's a ton of it. This is what peak website performance looks like.
> Usenet newsgroup alt.home.repair
This dude is old school.
the people you pay to do it aren't going to do it any safer than you would and if they get hurt you're liable. You may as well watch some youtube, take your time, and do it yourself.
I have had to replace mine before.
I was sitting in the family room. Big slam sound. I go out and check the garage and one of the springs had broke.
It is really not a big deal to switch them out.
I had a teacher in high school who was blinded (I think only in one eye) trying to do this repair. You could not pay me enough money to do this repair.
>This work is risky, but the risk is comparable to doing your own car repairs, or climbing on the roof of your house to clean your gutters.
Notably, "unintentional fall" is the #1 cause of emergency department visits for adults [1], which is why I'd hire a professional to work on my roof too (and wince when they don't wear safety equipment). I'm not sure where "crushed by your own car" falls on the list, but while I'm perfectly comfortable digging around in the engine bay, you also could not pay me enough to crawl around under a poorly jacked-up car.
1. https://wisqars.cdc.gov/lcnf/