It usually starts with a bang, loud enough that people check the front door or the basement before anyone thinks of the garage. Then the next morning the door won't open, the car is stuck inside, and you're late for work. This is the most common garage door emergency in the GTA: a broken torsion spring.
How to Confirm the Spring Is Broken
- Look up. On most doors the spring sits on a steel shaft directly above the opening. A healthy spring is one continuous coil. A broken one has an obvious 2-5 cm gap where the coil separated.
- The opener strains. It hums, lifts the door a few inches, then gives up and lets it settle back down.
- The door is suddenly very heavy. A balanced door lifts by hand with one arm. If it now feels like dead weight, the counterbalance is gone, and the counterbalance is the spring.
- Loose, slack cables. When a spring lets go, the lift cables at the edges of the door often go slack or slip off their drums.
What NOT to Do
- Don't try to lift the door alone. A double-car door can weigh over 130 kg with no spring helping. Doors have come down on hands, feet and car hoods this way.
- Don't touch the spring, cables or drums. Even "broken", the system can hold residual tension, and the winding cones and set screws are exactly where DIY injuries happen.
- Don't buy springs online to install yourself. Spring sizing depends on door weight, height, track radius and drum size. The wrong spring means an unbalanced door and a chain of new failures even if the installation itself goes fine. If there is one garage door job to leave to someone with winding bars and training, it's this one.
What TO Do
- Disconnect the opener by pulling the red release cord, so nobody triggers it from a car remote.
- Keep the door closed and keep kids and pets out of the garage.
- If you must get the car out, wait for the technician. With proper equipment the door can be raised safely and the spring replaced right after, in the same visit.
- Call a licensed company. We answer at (647) 696-6639, 7 days a week, and replace springs across the GTA the same day, usually within hours. The estimate is free and you get a firm price before any work begins.
Why Springs Break (and When Yours Will)
Nothing was "wrong" with your door. Springs are consumables. Every open and close flexes the steel, and after the rated 10,000 or so cycles, which is 7 to 12 years for most families, metal fatigue simply catches up. GTA winters speed up the ending because cold steel is brittle steel. January and February are peak season for spring failures, and it always seems to happen on the coldest morning of the year.
Two ways to get ahead of it: an annual tune-up, which can spot a dying spring before it lets go, and high-cycle springs rated for 25,000+ cycles, which last roughly two and a half times longer for a modest premium. Busy households should seriously consider the upgrade.
One Spring Broke. Replace Both?
On two-spring doors, yes, almost always. Both springs have identical mileage, so the survivor usually follows within months, and the door runs unbalanced in the meantime. Replacing the pair in one visit costs much less than two separate service calls. Full details on our spring repair service page.