Our customers ask us all the time how they can perform regular garage door maintenance so they don’t have to pay us to come out all the time. Even if you hire a garage door company to maintain as well as repair your doors, it’s always a good idea to do some maintenance on your own.
By performing some tasks monthly as well as a few times a year, you can get to know your garage door and stay on top of any problems that might come up, before they become huge and costly.
Monthly Maintenance
Every month, there are a few quick tasks you can do to check and maintain your garage doors.
The first is to just perform a quick visual inspection. Look around the door, tracks and opener. Do you see any wear and tear that wasn’t there last month? Does anything look different?
Make sure you look at the springs, your pulleys and cables, the garage door rollers, and all of your hardware. If you notice a screw or piece of hardware that is loose or missing, tighten it or take a picture of the missing hardware. You can always call a garage door company to see what is missing and replace it.
If you have a few more minutes after your visual inspection, consider wiping down the tracks. Keeping your tracks clean prevents any build up and ensures your door can move up and down the tracks smoothly. All you need to do to clean the tracks is take a damp cloth and wipe them down. Be sure to wipe it down after with a dry cloth to get it nice and dry before you operate the door again.
Lastly, you can check the balance of your garage door if you think you can do this. Tip: ask your garage door tech next time they are over to show you how to do this, so you can do it on your own.
To check the balance you simply need to disconnect your opener from its power source, manually lift the door, and check that when manually operated, it glides smoothly on the tracks and doesn’t resist. If you lift the door up, it should stay up. If you can’t open the door manually very easily, your door is probably not balanced.
Quarterly or a Few Times a Year Tasks
Lubrication is a good idea for your garage door to operate well. Ideally you’ll lubricate your garage door once a quarter; but 1-2 times a year is ok too. All you need to keep on hand and stocked in your garage is a lithium or silicone lubricating spray. You can buy this on Amazon or at your local hardware store.
Simply open the can and spray on the following parts: hinges, rollers, tracks. Keeping this parts lubricated helps to prevent damage. It also helps the door run smoothly up and down the tracks. This task is quick and should only take 5 minutes at the most.
Yearly Maintenance Task
Every year take 1 minute to check the auto reverse feature of your garage door. All openers made after 1993 have this feature. If you don’t, replace your opener!
Auto reverse is exactly as it sounds. If something is placed in the way of the garage door closing path, the door with automatically reverse. Test this by simply placing a roller up newspaper on the ground where the garage door sits when closed. Then try and close your garage door.
If your door automatically reopens, you’re good! If not, call a professional. Could be that your sensors are not adjusted properly. Or you have a bigger problem. The auto reverse feature is a huge safety feature that needs to be in working order to prevent damage to people and property!
Taking a few minutes every month to check out your garage door can go a long way in overall maintenance and longevity in your garage door, it’s parts and operators.
If you are in the Los Angeles area, give GR8 Garage Door a call!
