Garage Door Repair 24/7

Usually you hear it — a loud bang from the garage, often when nobody's near the door. After that the opener will strain, hum, or lift the door a few inches and stop. Look at the spring above the door: a broken torsion spring has a visible gap in the coil, like someone cut a slice out of it. The other tell is weight. A door with a working spring is fairly easy to lift by hand. A door with a broken one feels like it's bolted down.

Nine times out of ten it's the safety sensors. Those are the two small photo eyes mounted near the floor on each side of the opening. If something is in the beam, if one got bumped out of alignment, or if bright sunlight is hitting one directly, the opener refuses to close and usually blinks its light at you. Clean the lenses, make sure both indicator lights are steady, and check that nothing is in the path. If the door closes partway and reverses instead, that's more likely the opener's travel or force settings, or something binding in the tracks.

Stop using the opener — running it against a jammed or unbalanced door tends to turn a small repair into a bigger one. If the door is stuck open and you need to secure the garage, and only if the door is not hanging crooked or clearly off track, you can pull the emergency release cord and move the door by hand. If a spring is broken, don't: the door is extremely heavy without it. Then call us and describe what you saw and heard.

Yes, and it helps a lot. There's a photo upload on our service request form. A picture of the spring above the door, the cable at the corner, the damaged panel, or the label on the opener often tells us what parts to bring, which means fewer trips and a faster fix.

It depends on what's wrong and how old the door is. Springs, cables, rollers and openers are wear items — replacing those on an otherwise sound door is normally the right call. Replacement makes more sense when the door itself is failing: rot along the bottom section, rust through the steel, multiple damaged panels, or sections that are no longer manufactured. When you ask us, we'll give you both numbers so you can decide rather than guess.

We work across Greater Boston & surrounding Massachusetts towns. Our service areas page lists the towns we cover regularly. If you don't see yours, call anyway — depending on the job we can often still help, and we'd rather tell you yes or no directly than have you guess.