Springs do the heavy lifting — literally. When one breaks, the door becomes dead weight. Here’s how repair works and what it should cost.
Your garage door doesn’t weigh 20 pounds — it weighs 100 to 300. The reason you can lift it with one hand (and a 1/2-horsepower opener can cycle it thousands of times) is spring counterbalance. When a spring breaks, the counterbalance disappears and everything stops working at once: the opener strains and quits, the door slams heavy, and forcing it risks bending panels or burning out the motor.
Spring replacement is the single most common garage door repair in America — and the one least suited to DIY, because the springs store enough torque to cause serious injury when handled without winding bars and training.
Torsion springs mount on a shaft above the door opening and twist to store energy. They are standard on most doors installed in the last 25 years, cycle more smoothly, and are safer because the spring stays on the shaft when it breaks. Most residential torsion springs are rated for about 10,000 cycles — roughly 7–10 years at 3–4 uses a day. High-cycle springs (25,000+) cost more up front and are worth it for busy households.
Extension springs stretch along the horizontal tracks on each side of the door, common on older or low-headroom installations. They must have safety cables threaded through them — if an extension spring without a safety cable snaps, it becomes a projectile. If a pro finds extension springs without safety cables, adding them is a must, and converting to a torsion system is often the better long-term fix.
Some failures are obvious, some sneak up. Call a pro if you notice:
On a two-spring door, both springs have absorbed the same cycle count. When one breaks, the other is statistically weeks or months behind. Replacing both in one visit costs far less than two service calls, keeps the door balanced side to side, and puts both springs on the same wear clock — the second spring adds little more than its part cost while the system is already de-tensioned.
Torsion spring replacement requires proper winding bars, the correct spring rate for your door’s weight, and experience — the stored torque can break bones. It is consistently ranked among the most dangerous DIY home repairs. This is one job worth hiring out.
A stocked technician typically finishes in 30–60 minutes, including rebalancing the door and a safety check of cables, rollers, and opener force settings.
The opener was never designed to lift the door’s full weight — only to guide a balanced door. A running opener plus a heavy door almost always means the spring is broken or has lost tension.
Lubricate the coils with a silicone or lithium garage-door lubricant twice a year, keep the door balanced (have it tuned up annually), and consider high-cycle springs if your door runs more than 4 cycles a day.