The garage door maintenance checklist (12 checks, twice a year)

Run it in spring and autumn

In Utah the two dates that matter are before winter and after it. Winter is when cold-fatigued springs break and when road salt starts working on cables and bottom brackets. Twenty minutes in October and again in April catches nearly everything.

The twelve checks

1. Watch and listen to a full cycle. Stand inside, open and close the door once, and pay attention. New noises and hesitations are the earliest warning you get.

2. Balance test. Close the door, pull the release, lift by hand to waist height and let go. It should hold. Drifting down means spring tension is off. Slamming down means a spring is broken.

3. Auto-reverse (obstruction) test. Lay a flat block of wood on the floor in the door's path and close it. The door must reverse on contact. If it doesn't, the close force needs adjusting today.

4. Photo-eye test. Close the door and wave a broom handle through the beam near the floor. It must reverse immediately.

5. Inspect the cables. Look for fraying, kinks, rust or strands lifting away. A frayed cable is a scheduled repair; a snapped one is an emergency.

6. Inspect the springs. Look for gaps, cracks, rust or coils that have started to separate. Never adjust them yourself.

7. Check the rollers. Chipped, cracked, wobbling or worn flat on one side means replace. Nylon rollers should spin freely by hand.

8. Tighten the hardware. Roller brackets, hinges, track bolts, and the bolts holding the opener rail to the ceiling.

9. Lubricate. Silicone or lithium spray on hinge pins, roller bearings, spring coil and opener rail. Not the track.

10. Check the bottom seal. Cracked, flattened or missing rubber lets in cold, water and mice. It's a cheap strip to replace.

11. Clean and inspect the sections. Rust bubbles on steel, especially along the bottom edge where salt collects, mean the door is on a clock.

12. Test every remote and the keypad. Replace batteries while you're there rather than on a morning you're late.

What you should never do yourself

Adjusting torsion spring tension, replacing springs, replacing cables under load, and bending tracks back into shape are the four jobs that put people in emergency rooms. All of them involve stored energy or a door that can drop.

Everything else on the list above is safe with the door closed and the opener unplugged.

What a professional tune-up adds

A 25-point service covers the same ground plus the things you can't easily judge: correct spring tension for the door's actual weight, drum and bearing condition, track alignment measured rather than eyeballed, and close-force settings set to specification.

At $89 to $149 it's routinely cheaper than the single emergency call it prevents.