Best Left to Professionals: Why DIY and Garage Door Repairs Don't Mix

There are many home improvement projects that are great for homeowners to take on themselves: unclogging the kitchen sink, for instance, or mounting a wide-screen television on the wall. There are other parts of the home improvement realm that are best left to professionals because of the safety risks involved, and one of these is anything having to do with garage door maintenance and installation.

Springs

Garage doors use springs to operate. These can be torsion springs above the door itself or extension springs above the tracks the garage door goes up and down on. Both types of springs are under enormous tension, and if they snap anyone near them can be badly hurt or even killed. Therefore, it's best to have a professional locksmith do any type of repairs, replacements, or maintenance of garage door springs.

Adjustments

It's also best to have professional locksmiths install new doors. The basic task of putting together garage door hardware is fairly simple; however, there are several tricky adjustments that need to be done absolutely correctly for the sake of safety.

One of these is adjusting the door to make sure it reverses when an object is beneath it. If this isn't done correctly, the door may not reverse properly when a pet, person, or vehicle is underneath.

Also, if the descending force and travel distance of a garage door isn't adjusted correctly, it will bounce back up when it reaches the ground. This is a problem that happens frequently when homeowners install a garage door opener for the first time. It takes a lot of tweaking to get the garage door to stay down, and this is especially true in the first year the garage door is in operation and when the weather changes.

Sources:

Garage Door Springs - What You Need To Know, About

Safety Tips For Children Around The Garage Door, GarageDoorChildSafety.com