The following is a true story of a someone who opted to fix their own garage door instead of calling an expert. This person’s story is an example of why trying to save a few dollars might cost you serious injuries or even your life.
This particular “do-it-yourself-er” didn’t have a fancy automatic garage door, it just had a manual unit: drive up, get out, lift the door, get back in, drive in, get out, close the door. Everything was fine with his garage door, but he felt that it could be a little easier to lift. So, he decided to adjust the spring tensioning mechanism himself. Who needs a professional, he thought, I can do this myself!
Garage doors are heavy, and without the springs, all you’ve got is dead weight, too heavy to lift. To adjust the door, he had to tinker with the spring coiling components — it’s the coiling process that makes the door easier to maneuver. When he reached what he thought was the ideal balance of tension and torque, he lifted the door. It went up nicely. So far, so good, he thought. He made a few more tweaks and then lowered the door. That was a mistake!!!
As he lowered the garage door, all the spring support went completely slack. Suddenly, he had 300 pounds of wood crashing down on him. He slowed the door’s descent a bit, but it wasn’t enough. The door fell with a crash, and his left hand was smashed to the ground — pinned between the door and the concrete floor, he couldn’t budge the door an inch, and since it was well into the night time, and he was in pain, he had to yell for help to be “rescued.”
To this day, he still likes to repair things, but he has learned his lesson about messing with spring-loaded slabs of wood. His hand healed nicely, and he eventually got over the indignity of being rescued. But, no matter how much he might be tempted, he will never take a wrench to a coiled-up spring again. Words to live by…
A garage door is the largest moving object in most homes and we at Worcester Door Company highly recommend that you do not try to fix garage doors yourself, whether it be broken springs, rollers, pulleys, snapped cables, door off the tracks, or an adjustment as in our story above, leave it for a qualified technician to perform the service and repair.
