Garage door maintenance for storm season

Why the garage door is the weak spot when a storm hits

A two-car garage door is the largest opening in the house by a wide margin, and it is held shut by rollers sitting in a track. When a straight-line wind gets on the outside face, the door flexes inward like a sail. Flex it far enough and the rollers pop out of the track, the door folds into the garage, and the wind is now inside the house pushing up on the roof. That chain is why so much of the storm damage north Mississippi sees starts at the garage.

Lee County sits in the stretch forecasters call Dixie Alley. The severe season here runs a long spring, peaks around March and April, and comes back for a shorter turn in November. The county remembers what wind can do to a garage door, and there is no need to repeat the stories. The useful thing is that a door can be made a lot harder to fold, and most of the work is a socket set and an afternoon.

What does a garage door maintenance check cover before storm season?

Do it in March. Follow the load. Wind hits the door skin, the skin hands the load to the struts, the struts hand it to the hinges and rollers, the rollers push on the track, and the track hands everything to the bolts in the framing. Whichever link is weakest is where the door lets go, so check the links in that order.

Struts. Stand inside with the door closed and look at the back of it. A strut is a horizontal steel channel bolted across the full width of a section. Most doors around here shipped with one across the top section, where the opener pulls, and wide doors sometimes came with none at all. Push on the middle of each section with the flat of a hand. A section that oil-cans, flexing in and popping back, has no strut where it needs one. Adding struts is one of the cheaper things you can do to a door, and it gets quoted on the phone.

Hinges and rollers. Struts only help if the hinges hold. Put a wrench on the hinge bolts between sections and snug anything that turns. Then watch a roller as the door runs. Every one should be inside the track and turning, not skidding. A roller riding the lip of the track before the storm is the first one out during it.

Track bolts and hangers. This is the link most people skip. The vertical tracks are lagged into the jamb, and the horizontal tracks hang from the ceiling on angle-iron hangers. Put the wrench on every lag and every hanger bolt. Then look at the hangers themselves. A hanger that drops straight down from a single joist swings when the door is pushed. One braced back at an angle does not. Loose track is how a door on a windy night ends up crooked in its opening, and an off-track reset runs $125 to $400 on the cost page after the fact.

The bottom seal. Squall lines here bring the rain sideways, and the bottom seal is the only thing between the driveway and the garage floor. Close the door, turn the lights off, and look along the bottom edge from inside. Daylight at a corner means water on the slab that night, and a wet slab is where rust starts climbing the bottom section and the cable brackets. A seal that has torn out of its retainer or shrunk short of the corners is a cheap part on the same visit as anything else.

Will the garage door opener work when the power is out?

Only if it has a battery backup, and only if the battery is still good. After a bad storm the outages in Lee County can run days rather than hours.

Test it before you need it. Unplug the opener at the ceiling outlet and press the wall button. A unit with a working backup runs the door on the battery, a little slower than usual. A unit that does nothing either has no backup or has a battery that aged out. Most units beep or blink when the battery is failing, and people learn to ignore it. Then find the red release cord and pull it once with the door closed, so you know how it feels, and reconnect it.

If the opener is old enough that a backup was never an option, that is a conversation for the opener repair page. Belt-drive units with battery backup run $350 to $650 installed, and both numbers, repair and replace, come with the visit.

Does a garage door need a tune up after a Tupelo summer?

September, once the worst of the heat breaks. The summer works on the door differently from a storm. It sweats on it. An unconditioned garage in August runs humid enough that the slab sweats on a cool morning, and the bare steel of the spring coil above the door sweats the same way. Three things come out of that.

Start with the rust on the spring and cables. Rust on a spring shows up as pits long before it shows up as holes, and the pits are where a spring cracks early. Look at the coil for a dull orange bloom, and look at the wall under it for a rust-colored shadow where the dust has been settling all summer. Then run the balance test. Pull the release cord with the door closed, lift the door to waist height by hand, and let go carefully. A door that stays put has springs with life left. A door that sinks is spending its cycles. Standard springs are good for about 10,000 opens and closes, which is seven to ten years for most households, and a pair on a standard two-car door runs $220 to $350 replaced on a scheduled visit. The spring page covers what the unscheduled version looks like. Wipe the coil down and put a light coat of garage-door lube on it, silicone or lithium, not WD-40. Check the bottom loop of each cable while you are down there. That loop lives in whatever the driven rain left on the slab.

Then the seal, which does the opposite of what a cold-country seal does. Vinyl and rubber go soft in a garage that bakes all afternoon, swell, and drag. So does the wooden stop molding around the opening if it got wet in the spring. A door that reverses right at the floor in September, with clean sensor lenses, is usually reading that drag as an obstruction. The won’t close guide sorts the seasons. The fix is a new seal or a trimmed stop, not an opener adjustment.

Last, the rollers. Whatever lube went on in March is varnish by September, with a summer of pollen and dust stuck in it. Rollers that skid instead of turn make the grind you hear from the kitchen. Wipe the track dry, lube the roller bearings and hinge pins, and watch the door run. A set that still skids is a set of nylon rollers, $110 to $190 for the full set, and the quietest upgrade a door here can get.

How much does a garage door tune up cost in Tupelo?

The homeowner version costs a can of lube and a couple of afternoons a year. The paid version, a tune-up and safety check with the door balanced and the force limits set with the springs under load, is $75 to $120. Book it if the balance test made you nervous or the wrench found a lag that will not stay tight.

When you call, say what the load-path walk turned up. “Top section flexes, two hangers loose, seal has daylight at the left corner” is a complete parts order. So is “door sank on the balance test.” Around Tupelo and Lee County the number is (662) 407-6162. Book it in March if you can, while the schedule is still open and the first watch of the season has not been posted yet.