I had a teacher in high school who was blinded (I think only in one eye) trying to do this repair. You could not pay me enough money to do this repair.
>This work is risky, but the risk is comparable to doing your own car repairs, or climbing on the roof of your house to clean your gutters.
Notably, "unintentional fall" is the #1 cause of emergency department visits for adults [1], which is why I'd hire a professional to work on my roof too (and wince when they don't wear safety equipment). I'm not sure where "crushed by your own car" falls on the list, but while I'm perfectly comfortable digging around in the engine bay, you also could not pay me enough to crawl around under a poorly jacked-up car.
I don’t understand why it’s even considered safe to have one of these springs in one’s garage without a solid shield of some sort. While the energy involved is small on the scale of energy storage devices (<1 kJ or about 1 Wh if you believe the article), the speed at which it can release makes it quite dangerous. Your cell phone has a bigger battery than this! But your cell phone battery can’t discharge in a couple milliseconds.
Which brings to mind some rather different designs. A rather small motor with a lot of mechanical advantage can easily open a close a garage door, and if a DC or low voltage AC motor is used, it could do so quite a few times even if the power goes out.
You can even buy off-the-shelf springless garage door systems!
(I’m honestly not sure why springs are common at all in this application. IIRC I grew up with a garage door driven via a motor with a worm gear that engaged with a long threaded shaft, and there were nonetheless a pair of springs. Surely the added cost of a better motor and some upgraded mounting hardware for the motor box would have been less than the cost of those springs, especially installed. Maybe these designs are all essentially unchanged from decades ago when a ~100W (shaft) motor that could operate at a controlled speed even under negative load would have been exotic and expensive?)
> I don’t understand why it’s even considered safe to have one of these springs in one’s garage without a solid shield of some sort.
The shield is the steel tube that runs down the middle of the spring. When the spring breaks, it's got an integral safety containment, similar to the aircraft cable that is often run through extension style springs (which are probably far more dangerous when they break, though less dangerous to service).
> I’m honestly not sure why springs are common at all in this application.
They're nicely matched to the load profile of the door. As the door is fully closed, the spring is exerting maximum upward force. As sections of the door transition to the horizontal track, the spring is simultaneously relaxing some, meaning it exerts around half the force when the door is halfway up and very little force as the last segment hits the turn in the track. It's a pretty elegant match of mechanism to the load profile.
> A rather small motor with a lot of mechanical advantage can easily open a close a garage door, and if a DC or low voltage AC motor is used, it could do so quite a few times even if the power goes out.
Garage doors are actually fairly heavy. By balancing the weight with a spring, you do a lot of favors to your mechanical advantage systems. (Eg: less wear, less advantage needed, the door can open in a reasonable amount of time…) You also do yourself a few favors for when things fail. (Eg: you pull the safety release and it’s possible to open the door without the motor.) Finally, power isn’t free and motors aren’t either; A spring is a really cheap way to reduce the cost of both of these things.
Still need to store the same amount of energy. A counter weight or piston also has more opportunities for uncontained failure. At least when a garage door spring fails it is still constrained by the shaft running through the middle.
For what it's worth, I have also replaced my own garage door spring, and I really have no desire to do that again.
The risk isn’t just what the spring does but what happens to something caught in it. Springs can release energy a lot more quickly than a counterweight which can only accelerate a 9.8m/s/s, and therefore more risky to disable.
A few hundred points accelerating at 1g is still plenty of energy. It also comes with it's own challenges when it comes to releasing it.
It also provides a constant force, whereas the force required to raise a garage door linearly decreases the higher it gets. With the consequence that a garage door with a failed motor would slam into its stops over your head rather then into the ground. Followed shortly thereafter by the now liberated counterweight slamming into the ground.
True but by adjusting the angle you still end up with a fixed weight throughout the run. A spring force changes throughout the movement of the garage door and that’s chosen to match the unusual fact that the garage door’s weight changes as it’s gets progressively rolled up onto the top rails.
A fixed weight but not angle means the force varies. Cut the cable and acceleration would therefore also vary with that angle along the track.
Springs make a lot of sense from an installation perspective and can be easily tuned to match the specific door design, but if I was working from scratch on a DIY project I would prefer to use a counterweight if there was somewhere it fit.
Plus a counterweight is a big fat weight hanging in midair, so it's pretty obvious what will happen if you let it fall (and where it will land), whereas with a spring it's much harder to tell whether it's under tension or relaxed, and what it might do when the tension is released...
Maybe there could be a mechanism that lets you decouple the spring from the door and instead connect it to a worm drive, which would then be used to take tension off the spring using a power drill, all while it's completely contained in a steel housing.
Sure, but then you have to put the counterweight somewhere which would occupy garage floor or wall space. And the counterweight track would have to be enclosed for safety.
garage door springs are safe if you are careful and you use the correct tools and procedures. the instant you take a shortcut with these, you increase the likelihood of a bad outcome.
so, don't take shortcuts, and don't do the work if you don't know what you're doing.
the professionals know this and that's why we pay them, but they're not special creatures with special abilities; they're people who understand that this is a situation which can bite you, and they act accordingly.
Just about anyone can change their garage door springs, if they do so correctly.
If the garage door opener breaks, or the power is out, many people might have a really tough time opening the door manually without those springs. They might not be able to even do it at all.
It is still, of course, a valid question to ask if it's worth having dangerous springs up there all the time for the rare event of the opener being inoperative.
Or maybe we just shouldn't have doors that are that heavy?
They are surprisingly heavy, which is why you need such a beefy spring. When my spring broke a decade or so ago, I wasn't able to lift the door on my own, and with the assistance of my wife we were just barely able to lift it. Looks like they can easily be 200-500 lbs depend on materials (steel isn't light, but it's lighter than wood for this application), and I guess the issue is that you have to lift hundreds of pounds straight up against gravity.
I lifted mine but probably shouldn't have. I kept sticking stuff under it, a crate, a stool, until I was able to put two step ladders under. The higher it goes, the lighter it becomes since now the horizontal roller starts to take on some of the weight. But it's super dangerous.
When the spring broke, one of them snapped, and the quickly dropping door snapped the other one as well. Surprisingly it didn't damage the door itself. It's a double door so had two springs.
I toyed with the idea of replacing the springs myself but after asking around doing a few searches decided it's best I pay a professional to do it.
I guess it depends what you make it of, doesn't it? Growing up I had a typical corrugated roller door, it was very easy for me as a kid to open it with some of the weight supported by the roller. I think they have springs but they're not as extreme as the tilt/section doors. Apparently you can throw a motor on the end similar to roller blind kits, and they wouldn't have to deal with as much weight as a spring-based door. Of course, I do not live in an extreme weather area (yet).
It’s less ironic in areas subject to hurricanes. They have a very large area. One of the most damaging possible sequences in a hurricane is when the garage door blows in, then the wind just blows the whole roof off.
Lighter materials that would provide the same level of durability, security, insulation, and fire resistance would be significantly more expensive. No one wants to pay for that.
The other three walls don't have the same demands put on them. For one, you wouldn't need to lift them by hand, so they can be practically as heavy as you want.
450lbs but because it is not straight up but up and back that probably gives a 2-1 leverage so 225lb or 100kg. using your legs to lift it would be in the realm of a regular male weight trainer but not the average jo or jane.
Your 2-1 leverage assumption is wrong. The first 1' is full door weight plus all the friction in the system. The effective weight will decrease as the panels transition to horizontal, but deadlifting 400 lbs is easier than overhead pressing 200 lbs.
Sure it gets progressively easier as more and more of the door rides horizontally on its rails. But those first few inches where the door is nearly entirely vertical, must be some significant fraction of the total weight, probably >90%.
Not to mention you have to get your fingers or something underneath the closed door in order to begin lifting it in the first place. So the "from the ground" part is not insignificant.
My garage door is no longer connected to the opener, I just swing it up manually twice a day. My kid can do so as well without issue. Maybe mine is lighter.
That's why it's surprising how heavy the doors are. Springs make it very easy open and close the garage doors with one hand, so we get used to it. When springs snap, (they all have a limited lifetime) the doors suddenly feel surprisingly heavy.
Don't know your situation but I'd dare to suggest fix the opener, simply because it means not standing right underneath, you or your kid, when the springs snap. It was quite startling when that happened.
The springs are different than the opener. I don’t think the springs can be disconnected, they have to be carefully removed. You would know if they were or were broken, because you couldn’t open the garage door.
Side-mounted extension springs can be easily disconnected with the door up (and ideally clamped). GP describing them as "not connected to anything" makes me suspect that they're extension springs, which can be easily/casually inspected and determined to be not hooked up to anything. Torsion springs you probably need to look to see the marks on the spring wind up (or make a straight chalk mark on it and see if that twists uniformly).
I recently accidentally drained the battery on my car while I was fixing unrelated stuff on the door (and therefore had the door open for 3 hours). I bought a "jumpstarter kit" which is basically a 12000mAh LiIon battery (3.7V) and some electronics. It's just a little bigger than a large mobile phone, but you clip it to the car battery and it's capable of providing 12V at 600A to turn the starter motor for up to 5 seconds. That's 7.2kW from a shockingly small device. I treated it with all due respect.
1. It’s unlikely there’s power conversion circuitry in the kit. It’s almost certainly a few cells in series.
2. I’d be surprised if it can actually produce 600A at 12V. It’ll be “12V nominal” into an open circuit, which is really more like 14V for a 4-cell Li-ion setup. But even a 600 cold cranking amp lead-acid battery only supplies 7.2V at 600A.
I’m not an expert in how springs break but wouldn’t an ejection of material require the spring breaking in at least 2 places that are close enough to not loop around the rod? I’m curious if anyone’s ever been hurt by one breaking (other than when actively working on it).
I’ve also never heard of a shrapnel-based injury. Only door falls or torsion bars breaking arms.
I’ve actually replaced these in two houses, and yes, they’re dangerous, but honestly a little common sense and a straightforward (printed, with a buddy double-checking) list of steps you take with each quarter turn.
It’s super important to have the right torsion bars. Don’t try to invent your own.
Realistically, any household maintenance task which needs a checklist and a second pair of eyes and arms to be done safely, is often going to be carried out by someone who feels that they can manage without either.
I am a terrible person and have done this twice with a couple angle-ground pieces of rebar (almost perfect diameter) + a pair of vice grips.
On the one hand, nothing went wrong because I was careful. And rebar actually works really well.
On the other hand, it was pretty dicey, especially near the maximally-wound state when you're putting serious muscle into another quarter turn.
110% agreed on it being a 2 person job though. Reason #1: so someone is there to call 911. Reason #2: you'll need someone to cable up the drums while you're adjusting the spring, and it's way easier with 2 pairs of hands.
Anecdotally, yes, it happened to me. An older extension spring setup where each end of the spring had a J-shape hook. The hook itself sheared off of the body of the spring and shot a ~2 inch steel boomerang across the garage. Fortunately my only injury was psychological and temporary.
The replacement spring was constructed differently, with the "hook" portion replaced by two complete loops of metal. The safety cable runs through that and would hold it back during a similar failure.
It’s usually a requirement that, in an emergency, you can disconnect the electric opener and open it by hand. Certainly if there’s no second door to the garage, this seems essential or you’d be trapped if power or anything in the opener fails. Springs make this possible.
The spring counteracts the weight of the door. In the event of motor or electricity failure a well adjusted spring/door will be easy to manually open. A direct drive/worm gear would require an uncoupling mechanism and the ability to lift the full weight of the garage door overhead to get out.
Attention is required when changing these, but they really don't pose that great of a risk. I've been present when one broke, and I've changed them myself. As noted by others - the spring stays contained by the metal shaft. They really aren't worth substituting with something that has more drawbacks when a spring's lifespan is on the order of decades.
> I’m honestly not sure why springs are common at all in this application.
Properly adjusted springs effectively cancel out the weight of the door. This makes it easy to open and close with and without an opener, and greatly limits the danger of a door falling closed under it's own weight, which can seriously hurt someone.
One of my garage door springs snapped unexpectedly while my housemate was opening the garage door. I'm glad nobody was under the door at the time since it slammed so hard it put a bend in the bottom section.
> Notably, "unintentional fall" is the #1 cause of emergency department visits for adults
Yes. Until it happens to you, it seems like someone else's problem. I say this as someone who found himself staring at the sky with a concussion and whiplash after the ladder decided to walk out from under me on my concrete walkway. (I'll admit that it was probably my error, but I'll never really know since the ladder took a trip too). Now all trips up the ladder are treated with the gravity my younger self disregarded.
I'll add that it's very disconcerting to be unable to move or breathe as everything fades out...
I have a scar on one hand that I call my "Get down and move the damn ladder" reminder scar. Five of the inches have faded, but there's still one, bright, keloid spot at the base of my right thumb that stares right down at me every time I start to reach for something and think, "This would really be easier if I got down and moved the ladder."
From my OSHA30 training (IBEW, about a decade ago) I still remember and often quote that ladders are primary contributing factor to accidents that lead to tradesmen disability.
In my more-youthful idiot phase, I recall using a 4" holesaw to drill two holes into the roof awning, while standing atop a fifty foot extension ladder (planted into soil, only). After completing the first, I realized how dangerous this task was... and then still convinced myself to drill the second hole.
It seems the general contractor [bossman] hadn't wanted to wait for an already-to-be-delivered bucket lift, which the CCTV guys ended up requiring anyways ("no way in hell we'd do that on a ladder," they said to me). This woke me up that I needed to find better bosses/employment.
I've changed garage door springs myself; it was pretty easy. However, there are different types. The torsion ones are the scary ones, and I wouldn't touch those either.
Other (generally older) doors have longitudinal springs. When the door is open, the spring is uncompressed, and very easy to change. Just make sure to block the door so it can't close while you're working, and install the safety wire (it goes through the spring so if they spring breaks, it doesn't hit something).
Modern doors usually don't have this kind because they take up space in the garage. The torsion kind are on top of the door and stay out of the way.
Oh! This is such a lightbulb comment for me. I distinctly remember growing up with the wobbly side springs, and then after the motor died switching to a “screw driven” system and those going away. Ever since I’ve only seen the “screw driven” ones and when I hear stories about garage door springs I wonder why I’ve never seen them… Now I know where the springs on my current garage door are.
> Modern doors usually don't have this kind because they take up space in the garage
I'm willing to believe you but can't visualize this all that well. The "extension springs" in my garage door are in the space above the tracks that the door slides on. The tracks are longer than what the door itself would require, to leave room for the springs, but... is that a problem? They're on the ceiling, and some of that space would be occupied by the motor lifting the door anyway.
Among the workplace population, if you look at fatal workplace accidents [1] you'll find that falls are the second-most-common cause of death (deaths on the road are the most common)
Construction workers have the second-highest number of workplace deaths (transportation workers are the highest) and among construction workers, falls are the most common cause of death.
Transport and construction are second and third in fatalities per worker-hour, with 'farming, fishing and forestry' the most dangerous per worker-hour.
So ladders aren't the most dangerous thing out there - but falls are pretty near the top of the list when it comes to workplace deaths.
That's not to say people can't use ladders safely - just if you're hauling a heavy ass drill up a ladder and it's stopping you using both hands, the cable's flapping around your legs, your pockets are full of sharp pointy tools, and it's raining - maybe think twice :)
I guess the problem I find with using these statistics is that there are a whole lot of people who are... I guess to put it frankly... doing things completely wrong.
For example, I regularly use my table saw but and I see accident videos on Instagram/YouTube where people are doing something inherently dangerous, dumb, and obviously wrong on a table saw that I'd never imagine even trying to do, and then I read replies and everyone is like "oh that's an honest mistake and it could have happen to anyone," which is a complete farce because they should have NEVER even attempted doing it that way to begin with. And if you attempt to explain why this method is dangerous and say something like "oh, you shouldn't do it this way because of the rotation of the blade's spin and the direction that you pushing the piece in means that you pulling your fingers into the blade," they'll attack you and tell you that it's a mistake anyone could make.
I guess it bothers me that people don't try to learn how something works, get into accidents, write it off as honest mistakes, and then thinks everyone makes mistakes as often as them. It's like a major disconnect between learning how to do something and learning how to be good at it and not having imposter syndrome.
Look at the spread from #1 to #2. At young ages, the difference is pretty high, suggesting that young kids falling from things is common. In the middle age ranges, #1 and #2 are pretty close, suggesting that falling isn’t that different (from a statistical frequency POV) from the #2 option.
But then look at the split at the older age groups. Falling is by and far the biggest cause. By a ton. Starting at 45, the split just keeps growing. And these numbers are higher in general than any other age group, so they skew the “all ages” numbers by a lot.
So, while it is a major cause for all age groups, the effect size is very age related.
I would suspect that "unintentional fall" also covers falling over (like, the kind of fall that would happen if you tripped over a garden hose), not just falling off something. The former is the most common cause of emergency visits among the older people I know.
I figured for all ages it would also encompass falling off something. A chair, bed, etc… one type is more predominant for the younger ages (falling from something), the other is likely more predominant for the older ages (falling down, tripping, stairs, etc).
Falls hit 50% fatal above a twelve foot drop. Remember kids gravity is an accelerative force. It isn't a static force. You fall faster and faster every second you fall.
When my spring broke I called a someone local (maybe via Yelp), he came out within 30 minutes, replaced it in 20 and charged me $75. This was only a couple of years ago.
Likewise with brake fluid changes. I can do it, but the risk/hassle just ain't worth it for the cost of a pro.
After seeing the quality of work of "pros" with simple oil changes, I wouldn't trust one of them to properly change and bleed brake fluid, unless I was very familiar with their work.
I never replace the brake fluid. I do flush each caliper when changing summer and winter tyres. This means a selected offspring presses the brake twice for every tyre and the caliper has fresh fluid in it.
The fluid only degrades in the caliper, no need to replace it entirely, and no need for a computer when you do it like I described it.
It depends. Brake fluid absorbs moisture, which lowers its boiling point. You don't want it boiling from brake heat when you're really trying to stop. If you live somewhere humid then the whole reservoir can slowly absorb too much moisture and make the fluid unsafe.
Correct. Brake fluid absorbs moisture but the key is that DOT 3, 4, and 5.1 fluid then spreads that moisture evenly throughout itself, so that you never have a pool of water in your brakes but instead a dispersed low percentage of moisture in the fluid.
So even if water only enters the system at the caliper or reservoir, that moisture still spreads through all the fluid in the entire car. That's why you flush it all out when changing brake fluid.
No need to panic. An entire generation never refreshed this fluid and vapour lock was still a rare incident. Replacing 20% of this fluid every year is more than enough.
The most common risk is not properly protecting against contamination of the reservoir or not bleeding the system and having air or water in the line.
Air will compress and you could have brake failure. Also water, less common but happens, as the brakes heat up, can boil into gas and then also again you have loss of pressure and brake failure.
This is why I comment technique for race cars, which always have the risk of possibly boiling their brake fluid, will give a slight pump to the brake before coming up to a corner to pressurize the master cylinder and make sure that it does have a little bit of pressure pushback While you still have a little bit of space to react and ditch if something goes wrong
Right? One of my garage door lifting cables broke, and although I knew how to replace it, the $150 or so that it cost to have an actual professional fix it was money well spent.
I've done car repairs for decades, and climbed up on roofs when I had to, but I'm not dicking around with garage door springs.
It’s not that it’s a hard job, the labor cost comes in at around $100-$150/hr as you said. It takes about an hour to do.. But why am I going to do this when my time could be better spent elsewhere?
Saving $1000 tiling your shower? That makes sense. Saving $100 and potentially maim yourself in the process? Hello garage door repairman.
> you also could not pay me enough to crawl around under a poorly jacked-up car.
Indeed, but it’s not difficult to set yourself up with multiple failsafes.
By the time I’m set up to get underneath a car, I’m in a safer situation than driving the car given how many things would have to go wrong for the car to fall on me.
I use truck stands that will hold up several times the weight of the car. After I put it on the stands, I also give it several hard shoves to make sure it is secure.
I knew someone in high school who had started work at an auto repair place, and he described the process - and danger - of replacing car springs to me once.
I'm sure there are various types of car spring, the kind he was talking about was the stereotypical coil-of-metal spring. There's so much energy in there that a small slip up can be deadly.
It used to be worse. Lots of cars today use a coil-over-strut design that captures the spring. There's still a lot of energy, but it's much easier to manage safely, by the time the nut at the top runs out of threads there's generally little to no force left in the spring.
Way back (like... 30 years ago) when I was working on my Mustang, the spring was separate from the strut. You had to drop the control arm enough to unload it and remove it, and there wasn't anything to contain it. I always tied it with a chain or a seat belt, and tried to not be directly in front of it during the unloading process. I knew a kid who got hit in the chest by a spring popping out; he did not make it. Removing it or installing a new one were both quite dangerous for the careless.
The back springs in many cars are still separate from the shock absorber and it is those back springs which often fail. I have replaced them on several cars and can only conclude that the job can be done safely as long as you use a pair of reasonable-quality spring compressors - two of them, one on each side of the coil so that it can not pop out. These are used both during the unloading of the old spring as well as when installing the new ones.
> by the time the nut at the top [of a McPherson strut] runs out of threads there's generally little to no force left in the spring
This might be true on heavily lowered cars, but cars at stock ride height [with stock springs IOW] this is not my experience at all. I sure wouldn't risk my life or limb on it and spring compressors are quite cheap compared to an ER co-pay.
Thank you. I agree on all examples. Absolutely not worth the risk. Not even close. I wince thinking about when I changed my own oil in my 20s... Potentially throwing away so many good years, for so little gain. The car danger can be mitigated if the work is done under a professional lift.
There is pretty much zero risk if the car is either jacked correctly or put on ramps correctly. Dummies that rely on a single 1.5mm o-ring not blowing out on their hydraulic floor jacks are gambling with their life. Always operate on flat terrain, always chock the wheels, always use the parking brake, always use jack stands, always verify no movement in the vehicle by rocking it, never rely on the floor jack.
It’s amazing and honestly kind of sad how risk averse some people are. The reason I don’t change my oil anymore is it just isn’t worth the time and hassle. The “unsafety” of such a task doesn’t even register on my things to be worried about: at all. Jack it up, remember to put on gloves(!!!!) put the fucker on stands and go.
The actual scary thing is I’m pretty sure way back when I was a kid we’d just dump the oil down the storm drain. I hate to think what that was doing to the environment around us.
I’m baffled too. Changing oil in a car is dead simple and effectively zero risk with a proper pair of jack stands and a modicum of common sense and mechanical aptitude.
Not everyone is born with common sense. I sure wasn't. I'll find some way to do something that will leave the people with common sense scratching their heads, saying "but why wouldn't you just...".
There's plenty of unreliable jack stands, especially the folding tripod-type is easily toppled. I still use these but I put a few LECA-blocks and/or stacks of lumber under the edges of the car to catch it in case the jack stands fail. This never happened but I prefer not to end up a statistic of the ´man found dead under car on farm' type.
A jack is basically suicide tbh. Jackstands are fine, provided they're used correctly.
Ramps are nice, provided you don't need to take a wheel off, then you're using jackstands anyway, so, if you're buying one or the other, jackstands are a good option.
Personally, if you have the space for it, a trench is the best option, I had one previously and I miss it alot. Nothing leaves the ground, car just pulls in and is ready to go. Mine was like 2ft deep, so, maybe a little cramped, but very comfortable once you're in there working. You couldn't make a standable trench at home without engineering it anyway, so, a crawlable trench is really the way to go.
Lazyness. I've been under a car dozens of times with them, never had an issue, but know it's not the best practice and try to use jackstands... but it's just so much quicker!
Valid, re ramps > jack stands > floor jack. I always used ramps, but still... won't do it again. I'll change plugs + coils etc because you don't need to get under the car.
I do my oil changes top-side now, using an air-powered Mityvac (MV7300; no affiliation).
That's the factory-recommended procedure for several brands now and works well on my Mercedes and Honda. I was skeptical at first, but did the extraction and then removed the drain plug and the oil I got from the bottom wouldn't have half-filled a shot glass, so that's good enough for me.
As long as the filter is accessible from the top or side, I don't see the need to jack up most wet-sump cars (which is almost all of them).
Recently got one of these myself. Didn’t even get my hands dirty doing the change, wish I knew about fluid extractors years ago (though not all of my cars have had filters so easily accessible)
That seems like a fair review. The only things I've needed to do in about a decade was to replace the nylon hose (readily available from many suppliers and therefore cheap). It cracked after a half-decade of sitting outside with corrosive used oil sitting it. I also got a somewhat longer piece so I could have the tool sitting firmly on the ground and still reach the bottom of the sump. It seems like they could have given an extra couple feet without breaking the bank.
One thing to note: you'll need about 5 CFM @ 90 psi to run the venturi, which is more than a little pancake compressor can give, but otherwise isn't crazy for even a medium portable compressor. If you don't have an air compressor and weren't planning to get one, I think they probably make a powered pump version and that would be a better choice.
"Potentially throwing away so many good years, for so little gain. The car danger can be mitigated if the work is done under a professional lift."
I use ramps I built - solid 2x12. Those are extremely safe as there's nothing that can break, bend, or disintegrate. It's way more dangerous to drive than to work on the vehicle.
How much time did you spend changing oil?? It's a 20-30 min job once you have done it coupe of time and know the ropes. I sometimes do it myself not because I want to save few bucks, but because it's sometimes faster than going somewhere.
I read that as "I risked 50+ remaining years of my life (or serious life-changing injury) with low-probability" not "it took me so many wasted hours with probability 1.0"
I'm assuming you're leaving out the time it takes to drive somewhere to dispose of the used oil and driving back. I grew up in the boonies, and my dad was one to dispose of oil "out back". It was such a shock the day he brought home a proper catch can to have it disposed of properly
This isn't that bad for most people living in the US, given every major auto part chain in the country accepts the fluids for free (o'reilly, autozone, etc). There's often an auto parts store next to the supermarket or close by. Besides, for most cars we are talking about a once every 12-24 month event for only ~5 quarts of old fluid.
You can show up with the used oil in any receptacle you like, there's no such thing as a proper container beyond not leaking, they will take the contents off your hands.
there's a caveat to "most people living in the US" regarding what their lease/deed/HOA contracts/etc say restricting the working on one's car on premises. you'd be amazed at how restrictive they can be. in an apartment, you'll be lucky if they allow you to jack up your car to change a tire. opening the hood for anything more than adding fluids is also a no-no. even single family homes with strict HOAs do not want a car in the front drive actively being worked on (sometimes that comes with "for extended period" caveats, but not always). I gues they figure if you can afford to live there, you can afford to have someone else work on your car at their place not in their neighborhood.
"Don't buy in an HOA if you like to use your hands" is probably pretty fair advice.
HOAs serve a pretty useful purpose: to coarsely/imperfectly segregate people who want to live in an HOA away from people who would never want to live in an HOA and vice-versa.
Those two groups are somewhat prone to having conflicts with each other and HOAs let both be happier than if they were to be annoyed by living next to each other.
I bought an oil/fluid extractor off Amazon. It's basically a bicycle pump sized tank, with a long hose you stuff down the dipstick hole. You then pump the unit up, which creates a vacuum, and pulls the oil up and out of the car. Takes about 5 minutes to get 5 quarts out, and then you just refill, pour the used oil into the now empty bottles the new oil came in, and take it to your oil recycling center
> you also could not pay me enough to crawl around under a poorly jacked-up car
Absolutely, I agree. However, like any work, there's a safe way and a million unsafe ways to perform it. Crawling under a car on a jack is unsafe. Crawling under a car properly supported by jack stands is perfectly safe.
I replaced my own garage doors, not just because of the cost, but also because I could not find a contractor to do it inside of four months. I did my research, took my time, and got two 9x7' doors replaced in a weekend and a half at a leisurely pace for a third of the quotes I received from the pros.
The FUD spread online around garage doors is unreal.
If you don't know how to do it safely, don't attempt it. If you can spend a few hours learning how to do things properly and safely, go for it. It's not black magic. Garage door installers are people too, and it's not like the training is some dark arts ritual imbued upon them by shadowy figures. It's basic physics, geometry, and hand tools.
One of my friends attempted this repair and smashed his hand so badly that the doctor told him it might not be functional ever again. It did mostly recover, but still. NFW am I working on this and the tech can have my $300 once every 15 years.
Battery electric chainsaws are a game changer. I have a little 20v 12 inch that I've felled and limbed 2ft thick trees with. Doesn't jump around, stops the moment you let go of the trigger, isn't noisy or hot. Still have to respect it, but it's a much tamer beast than the two cycle monsters of yore.
Ditto, but after he charged me $550 it and used bars rather than a worm-drive "winder", I'm thinking that next time I'm going to either get a winder and do it myself (parts were sub $100) or at least get 3 quotes. I went with someone a friend liked, so I didn't do any shopping around, mea culpa. But, I guess he had to pay for his brand new F-250 somehow. :-)
I was half expecting him to say I needed other maintenance including new rollers, at which point I was going to call BS, because I replaced those rollers a couple three years ago and I'm about a million uses away from their rated million open/closes. Double sealed ball bearings, ask for them by name.
It's interesting whenever this comes up on Reddit and there are a hundred comments parroting how dangerous this is, but on closer inspection you can see the comments cannot discriminate between important details - eg. talking about how dangerous extension springs are, having no clue that they are different than torsion springs. Always fun to see how many people will pretend they have knowledge on a subject they have no experience in.
> hundred comments parroting how dangerous this is
And every time a similar post or question is made the same responses are parroted again.
I’ve read so much Reddit in college that I would play a game where id try to guess what the top voted comments would say. After a while it becomes tiring to read the same things over and over again.
Something I've noticed is that, when under the guise of safety/"don't do this thing", netizens seem to have few inhibitions sharing information from topics they barely understand or have experience in. Some caution is always good, but I feel like people are too comfortable using it as an excuse for sharing unsubstantiated information as fact.
> but the risk is comparable to doing your own car repairs
"Comparable" in that it's way, way greater, sure. Unless we're talking dangerous car repairs, like using a spring compressor to disassemble a strut &c. Or using harbor freight jack stands..
When my spring broke, I thought someone crashed their car into my house. It's an incredible amount of energy.
Garage door springs are up there with lathes & table saws, in terms of danger (IMO).
I used a Craftsman radial arm saw for a while. One day, I rotated the head 90 degrees to do some ripping.
The saw grabbed the wood, and climbed up on it, and fired it at unbelievable speed at the wall. It punched a neat hole in the wall the exact size of the board, and the board disappeared into the next room.
I got rid of the saw after that, and bought a sweet Makita cutoff saw instead, and a table saw for ripping. I also bought one of those full face shields people use with chain saws. I like these better than the usual shields because they are a wire mesh, and screens don't fog up.
For what it's worth the 3M full-face respirators are very well designed in that the inlet air passes over your face and then into a sub mask where it is inhaled. Exhaled air is directed out of the front and down. I spent hundreds of hours with one (the FF400) in unconditioned spaces running power tools in fairly strenuous ways and never had it fog at all.
I have a Sawstop for my main cabinet saw in my shop at home, but also a regular job site saw for working elsewhere.
The table saw is a great tool, and the safety feature makes sense. Especially for the cabinet saw where the incremental price for a comparable too is not so much - but there are plenty of other power tools that will hurt you just as badly. A router or jointer won't amputate a finger, it will just turn it to hamburger.
No matter the tool, you need to respect it and learn the safety rules.
"An oscillator generates a 12-volt, 200-kilohertz (kHz) pulsed electrical signal, which is applied to a small plate on one side of the blade. The signal is transferred to the blade by capacitive coupling. A plate on the other side of the blade picks up the signal and sends it to a threshold detector. If a human contacts the blade, the signal will fall below the threshold. After signal loss for 25 micro seconds (µs), the detector will fire. A tooth on a 10-inch circular blade rotating at 4000 RPM will stay in contact with the approximate width of a fingertip for 100 µs. The 200-kHz signal will have up to 10 pulses during that time, and should be able to detect contact with just one tooth.[4] When the brake activates, a spring pushes an aluminum block into the blade. The block is normally held away from the blade by a wire, but during braking an electric current instantly melts the wire, similar to a fuse blowing."
Honestly, Harbor Freight jackstands are just as safe as the others (sans the recalled ones from 2020ish). Regardless of brand, you want to employ a backup safety system—like removing some wheels and shoving them under there.
I used to do a lot of at home automotive work, and in the early days relied on jack stands since it's what was sold for the purpose and being a kid I didn't know better yet.
But after several years and a few close calls with cars unexpectedly shifting on the stands while applying work forces from below, I started using ramps and/or cribbing made of plain stacked dimensional lumber like 2x8s, and just scrap blocks of wood in general I'd taken from heavy duty pallets.
Jack stands just plain suck, it doesn't matter who made them. They're rigid at the vehicle interface (usually cast steel/iron) and generally only make very little points of contact over their cast in, small area profile - not even considering the tipping hazard when extended.
Solid chunks of wood piled up like cribbing is far more safe, and in my experience, free. And as an added bonus now you have chunks of greasy wood on hand for whacking things on/with less-destructively...
At my home country we used counter-weights, pulleys and cables. Took more space, it is arguably uglier (but who cares how it looks on the inside?) but the cable usually lasts for ages and fixing it is not a life-threatening procedure.
A torsion spring is great because as it unwinds, the tension decreases. As the garage door transitions from 200 lbs of vertical load in the closed position to almost 0 lbs when it's mostly parallel to the ceiling, a properly sized and wound spring reduces the force in synchrony with the door position.
Wouldn't a counterweight provide insufficient force at the bottom and/or excess force at the top?
You use multiple weights that telescope into each other ( https://www.hermco.ca/products/2000-series/ ), or a segmented counterweight (Kelley E-Systems one company that does this).
But they require space and a sturdy housing. Springs are as compact as you can get.
There are also some safety concerns, a cable connecting the door to the counterweight can break, and/or slip. This can result in pieces of metal flying everywhere. A broken spring typically stays contained.
Personally, I would do one of the counterweight systems for my new house.
An elevator on the ground floor and an elevator at the top floor have the "same" weight.
Not so for a 100%, 50%, and 0% open garage door. The 0% open door is the full weight; the 100% open door has very little weight (as most of the door is on the horizontal track).
Actually I found out that now the more popular system for this kind of door there doesn't even use counterweights or springs, but an endless screw inside a rail or a linear gear.
The reason it's not expensive to have someone else do it is that if done properly it's not dangerous. Otherwise culture would be lumping garage door repairmen with emergency responders who take dangerous jobs but keep society functioning. You couldn't get it done for $200 if the career killed people frequently.
The "if done properly" is critical, yes, if done wrong it's incredibly dangerous, but if you understand and respect it there's minimal chance of harm.
DIYed it three times now (on different doors of course) without incident.
On what planet do you live where dangerousness of work has anything to do with pay?
EMTs, who are basically doing the bulk of "saving people's lives" - are paid the lowest wages, worse than firefighters, police, and often even the dispatchers. Why? Because the market is totally saturated with former armed services folks. And in many states, assaulting a cop will get you in a fuckton of trouble, assaulting a firefighter will get you in a fair bit of trouble, but assaulting an EMT will (depending on the state) often get you...an ambulance ride, which you were probably getting anyway.
Retail workers, transportation workers, field workers...all very dangerous jobs and bottom-barrel pay. Same for people in meat processing; just look up the articles about migrant children working in meat packing plants (or don't if you have kids, because there are some incredibly horrific things happening to them.)
if you know it well enough to keep yourself safe then I'd usually say yes. The thing that differs between say... dealing with residential mains power vs spring is I can measure and have quite a bit of trust in materials used. springs I just don't know enough, if it's of good material, metal fatigue? and a mishap means a good chance of disablement. I just don't like springs. Same thing with car suspension and those spring clamps? No SIR.
I'm with OP. You don't see mass casualties among overhead door installation crews. So, there must be a safe way to do it.
I've also installed around 6 overhead doors, and followed all safety instructions that I learned from an overhead door installer. I've never once been killed.
I understand the idea of DIY and self repair, but doing some kind of specialized DIY work will require special tools, domain knowledge, ability to fix things on the go, ability to stay focused after a full week of work etc.
I am not dismissing DIY at all, but YouTube repair channels make it sound so easy but viewers forget making these repair videos is their job while your job is writing software. When you try it out IRL these repairs are always considerably more difficult and nobody talks about shipping cost that makes 5 minute replacements considerably more expensive.
The BOM of a DIY refrigerator (or anything of this sort), built using retail price components, is almost as much as a manufactured fridge that was built using components bought at a volume discount.
I've had springs replaced in the past, and that's one of those jobs I'm perfectly willing to pay someone else to do. The cost is insignificant. I'll happily wire up my own 240V appliances, work underneath my properly supported car, etc. But garage door springs? Nah, go ahead, you do it, send me the bill.
The cost really is the key for me. We had one replaced a few months ago and it was a few hundred dollars and was done the same day. I usually prefer to DIY, but it would have taken me a while just to measure everything, round up the right spring and acquire it, get the correct rods and cut them to size, etc. I'm sure that would consume at least an afternoon for me and it would still cost something to acquire the parts. The savings just isn't worth it.
If the cost to have it done professionally was $3000, it might be a different story.
I did one on the "do it with the spring relaxed and the door up" plan. The door isn't that heavy, you can just lift it with your hand to help the opener lift it up, and done. But cramped!! Getting the lift cable nicely wound on the lift pulley, giving it a bit of preload (pull) and getting it attached to the bottom of the door, all with the raised door in the way, and doing both sides, let's just say my supply of swear words was severely depleted by the end. But I did get it done, and no dangerous forces were involved.
Whereas I saw a professional do it in about 5 minutes flat on the "wind the spring and block it and then hook everything up with the door down" plan. But that can kill you if you do it wrong.
I replaced my torsion springs a few weeks ago with little drama. The hardest part was measuring the old springs so I could order the correct replacements. The reason I did it myself was 1) the springs used by contractors are typically lower quality and will last 10k cycles vs about 30k for the standard ones I ordered. 2) I wanted to learn how the system worked so I could adjust it as needed and know it was done right and not be reliant on an ‘expert’ same as why people work on their cars 3) labor costs in Seattle area are higher than most other areas. The best video on replacement is https://youtu.be/xOXO01rdZ5c?feature=shared. I used zip ties to hold the cable pulleys and open mouthed bracket in place instead of the vice grips as he did in the video. I did not weigh the door. I did it alone, though probably not recommended. I ordered from DDM Garage Doors. I wouldn’t recommend Amazon vendors as they all look pretty sketch. Definitely order proper winding bars with good rubber stops to help you ensure you’ve inserted it fully before each wind. If you are at all mechanical minded (replaced a clothes dryer drum? ), this is doable. Just go slow and be safe. Took me about an hour to remove the old springs, 3 days to get parts and 3 hours to install including having to repeat the winding because the cables came off during the first try. I wore gloves, safety glasses and during the winding of the springs a bike helmet and an over the ear headset to protect my ears. Probably could have used teeth protection, and a chainsaw type face shield. The dangerous part is tightening the set bolts while the spring is tensioned . If you aren’t paying attention, I can see that it might be easy to bump the bar out of place, releasing the tension and potentially shooting the bolts back at you or the spring catching your gloves and fingers and shredding them.
I don't know if this also applies to garage door springs, but when working with lathes for example, it is often recommended to not wear gloves. I imagine if the spring comes loose, it might slash open your hand, but with a glove, it could fully grab it and basically wind up your hand and arm around itself.
Nobody seems to mention keeping the springs lubed for longevity. What's the groups thinking on that? I keep a spray bottle of lube by the door and shoot it every few months, which is probably overkill, but it's so easy. Then just wipe off the excess and grime maybe yearly.
At least according to the article, the main failure mode is fatiguing, so I’m not sure lube would help with that, unless the corrosion is really bad. Most materials have a finite amount of cycles in them (although I’m a bit skeptical of the authors 7 year estimate…it seems low to me)
Roughly 30k cycles is typical.
You can certainly design a spring to have infinite life. But it requires reducing average deflection, aka more spring with less deflection per turn.
The article claims a 10k cycle limit for common-grade torsion springs (but again, I'm skeptical). You can design a spring to have infinite life. Still, you must constrain yourself to specific materials (steel and titanium being the most common) because most materials don't have an infinite life on an S-N curve.
Might help with corrosion, too. My grandfather had a very old garage door and opener, and one day something gave and it blew apart. It sounded very much like a shotgun had been fired inside the garage.
Fortunately, nobody was in or near the garage when it happened, but I'll remember it every time "garage door spring" comes up in conversation.
We had a corroded one that still functioned but I finally buckled under the RACKET the thing made every time the door opened and closed and got it replaced anyway.
Every single time you opened or closed it, it sounded like a goddamn car crash going on out front. Ugh.
Don't just lube the springs, take the cover off the opener and grease up the nylon gears. The grease eventually dries out and then the gears turn into dust.
> so if you have any doubts about your abilities to do risky physical work on your own, hire the job out like everyone else.
The problem I witness is that the people who kill or maim themselves will tell you they were confident. When people aren’t confident, their brains are responding properly to the danger and it generally leads them to making good decisions.
hard disagree. confidence != complacency/over-confidence.
self-confidence is actually an absolutely key factor to safety. it doesn't mean you are blind to the dangers, rather that you recognize them, are able manage and handle risks and how to mitigate them, and above all are not fearful. you absolutely need to trust yourself.
if you are not feeling confident you are NOT going to be safe. not being confident leads to timidity, second-guessing, maybe saying "ugh. i guess that is normal?" when they shouldn't. and if something goes wrong, you can't freeze, you have to be able react appropriately.
the first time you do a mildly risky thing like this, it's wise to do more research, go a little slower and think about each step. but there's no reason that you can't approach it with a safe and confident attitude, even the first time, if you are prepared - or even better - have a trainer/mentor that can check you.
when you feel "unconfident" or fearful that is when you should walk away.
A year ago I had a spring fail in my old/cheap system with tension springs. I was surprised to see the level of scamminess present in this particular area of repair.
After seeing that a set of replacement springs from a big box store was under $100 and wouldn't be that hard to do myself, I figured that it would be reasonable to pay an extra $100-200 just to have it done while I was busy with other things.
One guy over the phone tried to convince me that he would need to replace the entire cable system as well and lost any interest after I told him the cables were fine and the spring had failed from fatigue in the hook section where the cable was attached.
Someone else was "dispatched" from a local-sounding number and showed up with out-of-state license plates on his van. He quoted me $800 for the repair. I tried not to be a jerk and told him thanks, but I'll be looking around some more. He then dropped the price to $400, saying he'd do the job for that if he could replace only one spring. After another thanks, but no thanks he became aggressive and said that was a special one-time price that ended when he left my driveway. He later texted me with a $200 dollar price, but by then I had already arranged for someone to do a full conversion to a torsion system for about $500.
One scam/scheme not mentioned in the article is calling the phone number on the sticker of the vendor that installed your opener. Those are very valuable advertisement slots. Call anyone but them. There's not a ton of specialization in residential garage door systems.
Presumably because when they see the sticker they'll know that you called them without shopping around, so they'll quote you something ridiculous and bank on you not realizing you could easily get a second opinion.
Ah, the vendor doesn't run a generic repair shop? This makes sense if the only people that will call the vendor for a repair are the people who had the vendor install the thing in the first place.
They don't have to know the sticker is there while on the phone, only by the time they give you the quote. Once they show up at the house to diagnose the problem they'll be able to see the sticker or not.
To be clear, this is just me speculating about how such a scam would run, I've never seen it or heard of it.
Once every 3-7 years? I've heard of them breaking before but I've never had it happen in a place I lived, including my parents' house growing up, and the houses I've personally owned. I've never had the spring worked on other than to have it installed in the first place.
Again, I know they break sometimes. It should not be happening every few years.
(But if/when it does, take my money. I'll replace my car's brakes and wire a new ceiling fan but I'm not touching that spring for love nor money.)
I do not recommend DIYing this work, but I do recommend springing for the high cycle (20k cycles) torsion springs if offered by your installer (TLDR larger wire size and a few inches longer to optimize for longevity). They are a bit more in material cost, but will save you labor costs, which will only go up in the future. Also, depending on your living arrangement and situation, an unexpected spring failure can be annoying AF if you can't get vehicles in and out of the structure.
I recently had mine serviced and the spring I have is original (~30 years old) and looking a little old. I asked the installer if I should replace it and he said “no. They don’t make them like they used to. They don’t last nearly as long. Wait until this one gives up”
These doors are what we call a 'luxury problem': just more trouble because the premium door type was chosen. The single pane type door I know [0] are perhaps uglier, but they will last decades and do not need maintenance. They use normal springs.
If they are this bad to replace, should I be worried about them randomly failing? I mean, I drive right underneath them like twice a day backing in and out.
They typically fail when wound (closed), not unwound (open), because that's when they're stressed. Cables can fail when winding the drum (open), but you have two.
There is a rod that contains the broken spring. If an installed spring were to break when the door was open the most likely cause of danger is a few hundred pounds of garage door coming down on whatever was under it, so wait for the door to fully open before driving through.
What gets you as I understand it is that the turning handles for the springs. If you lose your grip on them its a rod of steel that's going to flung around at high speed with enough force to counter-weight an entire garage door.
I had mine fail on me a few years ago. Mine was a single spring, and after researching on how to replace, I decided that I'd rather pay someone else to take the risk.
It was around $700 at the time and the installer installed two springs (side by side) to handle a failure event with one of them.
I've installed doors with that system, or a very similar Menard's carries.
Given the choice, I'd opt for it since it is easier to fine tune, but I'm not convinced it's safer than the traditional way. You still have to secure the door against unintentional movement and ensure everything is assembled correctly before tensioning.
The only "safety" feature I see is it eliminates the appeal to use an inadequate tool to tension the spring, so resist the urge to use a flimsy old screwdriver and you'll probably have similar risk either way.
Good article, but the author is using low numbers for the "speeding bullet" stats.
Like many jobs both around the house and industrial stuff, know what you are doing before you attempt it. But go away with the "it's too dangerous for mere mortals" speeches and special legislation to protect us all. Many people are capable and willing to do work that is hard and or dangerous. Snowflake legislation doesn't help the world work. Darwin awards work for the betterment of society.
This garage door work is comparable to working on a vehicle suspension. Similar springs, similar preloading force, etc. And similar threat of death if you fuck up or do something stupid.
Nothing wrong with doing things yourself, but make sure you're following basic safety standards and procedures. And don't do stupid hacks cause the actual tools are expensive. This is how you get injured or killed.
So I recently helped my dad replace 2 of these springs. He is no engineer but used to be a firefighter and straight up told me "you don't respect the power of the spring....you will die" I don't think he ever had to respond to a call where someone died trying to do this....but I bet he had some local story of the dangers these pose growing up.
TLDR treat dangerous things with respect and you vastly increase your odds. Be it a firearm or a chemical or a fast spinning lathe.....danger can be lurking anuwhere and when you recognise it a d stop and develop a aproach to mitigate risks.....you can help elimate stupid mistakes that could really cost you.
TLDR its better to have annoyingly boring procedures than just wing it and hope it goes well.
"Phew! The hazardous torsion is all removed from the old spring. Now the disassembly can begin, with our old friend gravity as the only acceleration threatening personal safety."
Haha, also reminds me of how *"The Actions In This Video Are Performed by Professionals" became completely meaningless, because most of the time they very obviously aren't.
The author's intentionally verbose/non-linear storytelling technique, for example the two paragraph detour that describes his ladder and the ladder company's bankruptcy, and the 19 paragraph deep dive on garage door repair business marketing, makes it very hard for my brain to absorb the core information I was looking for (the procedure to replace the springs).
I know I'm kind of missing the point/creative intent of this essay, and I appreciate the non-linear full-of-detours style in other genres. For example I'm a huge fan of Norm MacDonald whose long, impossible-to-follow stories would often drive unaware audiences and talkshow hosts crazy. But for technical things I personally find the style super annoying and feeling like the author is trying to flex on how much engineering, business, and trivia knowledge he has in many adjacent topics.
I actually get anxiety thinking about getting trapped at a bar or party interacting with somebody who talks like this :-)
Curious how other readers feel about this, especially those who have the exact opposite reaction!
This is basically what the "early Internet" looked like that people often write paeans to. Lots of pages written by people very dedicated to a weirdly specific thing while also peppering it with nonsequiturs and their crazy theory about who runs the "real" government. It was fine, but hardly the glorious wonderland often portrayed. (Not that the current Internet is without its flaws, but if I want to learn something from someone it is a million times easier today than it was in the late-90's and early-00's.
> It was fine, but hardly the glorious wonderland often portrayed.
Probably down to personal taste, but I would happily take a thousand of these websites with strange, esoteric folk sharing knowledge in unconventional ways than another subreddit that's 70% non-sequiturs by volume, or a Stack Exchange thread that's just the same quesiton asked 400 times in broken english.
The difference is that the extraneous junk is in one long block on modern websites, whereas it previously would've been freely mixed throughout the actual content in the old web.
Yeah, that's a good point and it makes me wonder if the modern web has shrunk my attention span.
I used to often meet this exact type of engineer early in my career as an enterprise data storage consultant in the 90s and early 2000s. I would say the most common "character" I would run into at a customer site was "UNIX libertarian hippie guy" who would love to weave politics, especially about privacy, freedom of speech, government overreach, new world order, esoteric obsessive hobbies, etc into technical discussions.
I feel like the typical tech worker today either has very different socio-political views, or keeps their politics out of our workplace interactions.
At first I find it difficult to concentrate, but then I started really enjoying the article, and in way I think it is much better than current low-content-big-font websites. But yes, I was raised with this kind of content, so it seems that when I started enjoying was because I synced with a style that I already knew.
> This work is risky, but the risk is comparable to doing your own car repairs, or climbing on the roof of your house to clean your gutters.
I wonder what the net impact of an article like this is:
* How much money is saved by garage door owners?
* How much money is lost by professionals?
* How many people are injured/killed because this article made them think this was doable at acceptable risk, when they otherwise wouldn't have attempted it?
* How many people would've attempted it anyway, and would've been injured, but this article helped them not to be injured?
Modern bonus:
* How many people are injured because a YouTube/TikTok/etc. DIY influencer is informed by this article, makes a YouTube video that muddies the information, and people are inspired by the influencer video to attempt it?
Is there something I'm missing? A quick search of YouTube reveals tons of garage door spring replacement videos. It doesn't seem like the knowledge or parts are difficult to obtain.
Its widely known as one of the most dangerous DIYs you can do. I think typically people working on them will get pushed off their ladder suddenly from the tension in the spring releasing.
Happened in my family a number of years ago. The instructions said to crank the spring 7 1/4 turns. So it was really make a 1/4 turn, repeat 7 times. Not 7 full turns plus 1/4 additional.
After pulling the vice grips off, the door shot up with such force that it knocked the ladder over, causing a broken collar bone in the process.
I tried and failed to repair before, but didn't get injured. I had to take great care with the vice grips and other implements I was using; my intuition was they could become missiles.
There are several different springs, some are more dangerious than others. It isn't hard to safely replace any spring. However it isn't always obvious what is safe or unsafe and mistakes can kill.
The page in question predates the founding of YouTube by ~3 years. It's in the middle of the Geocities time period, back when video distribution on the Internet was probably via Usenet and digital photography was probably on a Sony Mavica writing to floppy disks - or maybe to compact CDR if you were lucky.
Sort of. It was a different world, but not quite that different!
Geocities was really dying by 2002. It had been bought by Yahoo! a few years previously, and they were intent on driving it into the ground.
Video distribution was indeed fairly rare, but Flash sites were very widespread, sometimes including video, but more often vector animations.
The Mavica was still around in 2002, although mostly in CD-R form. But cameras taking flash memory cards were also around, using a wild mix of CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, xD-Picture Card and MMC. SD had just been invented, and a year or so later I had my own cheap digital camera that took SD cards.
> If you've researched this subject at all, you will no doubt have heard that you shouldn't be attempting torsion spring replacement as a do-it-yourselfer.
I suspect that a lot or all of those videos are about "extension spring" replacements and not "torsion spring" replacements. Probably shouldn't do either, but the torsion ones can have instant and catastrophic failure modes during installation or removal.
yes this is one of those things that is scaring people but if you pay $500 some other guy can magically do it for you. The fact is that it is not that hard of a job and the dangers can easily be mitigated if you have some basic common sense and knowledge. Unfortunetly common sense is not that common and many people have been hurt doing this job. I myself would not hesitate to do this job like you say lots of information now days on how to do it this site is 22 years old in this post so now days you can see exactly what to do in many videos way before even attempting the job and that alone can take away most of the risk since you get hand held the entire process. I have to say I am a little disappointed in the HN crowd at how shy they are to do this job. All the handy men that do this job now are just humans like you and me and they all had to learn from scratch at some point. Again this is not that hard or dangerous but like the article says it has by shrouded in stories of danger and the trades people would not share their knowledge but told everyone how dangerous it would be so pay them money.
Or if you know it is going to be a huge pain in the.. then hire someone.
Recently i had all the central heating connections in my house replaced by smart thermostats. I could have done that myself given enough time, but i knew the old current system was from around 1970/1980 and i would face major problems. So i hired some guy to do it for me. Agreed upon a fixed price as well. It took him around 11 hours to get everything working.
One of our garage door springs "popped" just last week. Had to recruit two of my kids to help me get the door open to back out the vehicles. Even an aluminum garage door is heavy.
I wonder if longer life springs could be made from something like chrome silicon, or if the application of force won't work that way for that material.
This blog feels like something from Internet hyperspace: Informative, but shitty formatting / layout. I say the latter with genuine love -- no trolling / hate. This blog post could have been posted in 1994! Can we please get more of these on HN!?
Garage doors weigh from 80 to 200 lb (37 - 90 kg)[0], so you'd have to hang one of these from it[1]. Hmm, that doesn't sound too bad. Here's some smarter people than me discussing it[2]. Also, here's a company that sells them[3]. Looks like they use a pully system to double the weight and half the distance. Neat! I feel like I may have seen one of these before...
The people answering apparently don't know that you can use counter-weights, cables and pulleys instead of a torsion spring. It takes more space, but it rock solid and safer to fix.
Counterweights provide a constant force, whereas springs can be precisely balanced to the decreasing weight as the overhead door becomes more horizontal. It is inherently related to the design of segmented overhead doors.
300lbs of counterweights strapped to the doors would take up a good bit of space. Pulley systems would need to either be 1 to 1 or would need some space to fall below the garage floor or to be stored above garage door height.
They seem far safer, longer lasting, and cheaper and easier to repair than springs, but are more expensive to install, take up more space, and probably cost more all in all compared to springs.
You know, that design makes a lot of sense, since the door would be mostly horizontal by the time the pulley got close to bottoming out the motor would still be able to move it.
I bet those tubes go below the foundation though and god help you if the cable breaks and you have to fish those weights out to reattach it.
Maybe there is some easily reachable latch point on top or some sort of fluid pump port that will make it easier on you?
>Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
i thought there were alternates to torsion spring as the mechanism to open and close garage doors by now. I guess it’s limited for residential installs
I wonder if the claims of danger are exaggerated to keep those in the business making $$$, and spread like rumours aided by the lack of information in that era. Now that there's YouTube, and an abundance of information (and accompanying misinformation, of course), the truth can come to light.
yes this is dangerous ! first hand experience with a commercial rollup door. A small crowbar is used to tighten the final install, about four meters up off the ground, too.
Reading some of the comment section here makes this veteran DIYer sneer. Ya’ll need to “grow some” and unlearn helplessness.
Pay someone else who learned the simple steps to do the simple work and save yourself the time for more productive activities, but stop congratulating yourself on “avoiding a disaster” - too much drama for the task at hand here.
Its not a regular thing to work on for the majority of people. What's the point of manning up for this particular DIY if the danger is high? Is it really that big of an ego hit to pay someone for a job once in awhile?
I'm sorry, but this "sneering" attitude is hideous. It's OK to do this job yourself if you have enough experience. It's also OK to not do it yourself because it is, in fact, dangerous. It's also OK to suggest that other DIY'ers err on the side of caution if they aren't 100% confident.
What's not OK is insisting broadly to man up and do it yourself, stop being helpless, etc. You could encourage an innocent person to severely injure themselves. It's pointless and irresponsible.
It also only takes one mistake to severely injure yourself and permanently reduce your quality of life, it's worth considering the value you put on that when deciding these things. I like DIYing as well, but sometimes the risk vs reward isn't worth some extra money. People who get injured doing DIY work often have a similar attitude as yours until they make a critical mistake taking on something they "understand" and haven't done before.
The alternative is counterweights. Not exactly new, but there looks like there is enough space for them in this case. The ones in the house I grew up in were a pair of concrete cylinders on either side of the door, maybe 10-15 cm in radius and 1m in length, mounted vertically. Not sure why they're not more common - seemed a completely reliable system.
The door needs less counter weight as it goes up. In order for weights to work you either need several weights, with different weights bottoming out as the door rises. Or have the cable on a spiral pulley may work.
The counter weight is always taking the full weight of the door, there's just a linkage which rotates the door on the way up. So, not the same as the spring ones, which follow a curved channel.
This makes me less keen on them as in theory it's going to fall when it wears out, albeit with only 50% of the weight. Unless there's another failsafe.
Thinking about it, the failsafe should be that if one side fails first, it gets stuck against the track. Although I don't think the one in the vid would, because the track points inward
Coincidentally I just had a professionally done garage door spring replacement today, and I asked the repairman this question, and here is what he said:
1. The springs lift the door from the bottom, and from each side, which puts less load on the door itself as compared to if the entire weight were being lifted from the top middle every time.
2. The motors can be smaller, quieter and use less power
3. In case of power failure, the door is much more functional and safer the less apparently weight it has.
Also the springs themselves are very unlikely to be dangerous (as long as you don't try to replace them yourself), because he said they almost always break when the door is at the closed state, because that is when they are under the most tension. Therefore on the whole, the springs in practice offer no practical safety risk, while greatly increasing the safety of the door in it's normal operation while also reducing wear and tear on the door. They also allow people to have heavier types of doors if they want them.
Kind of hard to get a car out the door or window. Usually getting a car out of a garage isn't a big deal, because who actually puts their car in there? But also, you don't need to drive your car out if your structure is on fire ... OTOH, you may want to drive somewhere else if your power is out, especially if it's out for an extended period of time.
What an incredible web page design. It loads and paints instantly on any browser in existence and reflows faster than any site I've seen. The content is front and center and there's a ton of it. This is what peak website performance looks like.
the people you pay to do it aren't going to do it any safer than you would and if they get hurt you're liable. You may as well watch some youtube, take your time, and do it yourself.
That is about as true as you being liable for a mechanic hurting themselves working on your car or a repairman falling off the roof fixing your HVAC in that it's not true at all.
Now, if a mechanic is working on my car and my garage door spring snaps and injures them then yes, I would be liable.
I question whether it's actually true that they "aren't going to do it any safer than you would". I'd expect the typical person I hire to have a lot more experience than me which would give them a chance to be safer, to the point I'd expect it to overcome even the fact that they're probably not taking their time as much as I would.
Separately, being liable for something happening to someone else and that same thing happening to me are not equivalent. Macabre as it is, I'd rather pay out (or have my insurance pay) the lawsuit for a professional hired for a particular task ending up grievously injured than end up grievously injured myself. In a lot of cases, I'd doubt you'd even be financially liable. From a moral standpoint there's still some culpability, but in the case of garage springs I think your obligation is more to stress to the professional that you're happy for them to take their time and you're willing to pay accordingly than it is to subject yourself to the risk instead. From a societal standpoint, a few repairpeople building up expertise at a particular task is safer than everyone doing it individually.
Don't hire that person. Hire someone with insurance. You as homeowner are really unlikely to incur any liability as long as you are not substantially directing their work. Let them be the expert doing their job.
There are times to make repairs yourself - such as when you think you can do a better / more nuanced job than a "pro" or when acquiring the skill can pay dividends over a long period (eg once you learn to change your oil and rotate your tires, you will have the option to never pay for it.)
Taking on the injury instead of letting a pro handle is is explicitly NOT the reason to DIY! Presumably the pro has done that thing many times and survived, and even if he fucks up that's the risk of his job.
I rather pay for a dead person than be the dead person. Also, you might expect some professionalism from a person advertising themselves as capable of doing the job, so not sure how your liability assumption holds up.
That is a very weird take to me. That big slam presumably is the spring breaking, a lot of energy released at once in a rather uncontrolled fashion. The same energy will be released if you make a mistake installing it or the spring is faulty for whatever reason while you are standing right next to it.
Oof. Just because you did it yourself does not mean it wasn’t extremely dangerous, or that the average home owner should attempt it. There’s an incredible amount of energy stored in those springs when wound up
It's not that big a deal if you're someone that considers getting on a 6+ foot ladder not a big deal, or changing your own oil, or going to a shooting range with a rifle, or I guess driving a big rental truck. It REALLY helps to watching someone do it in person the first time, like a handy neighbor or something. Definitely error on the side of calling a pro than doing yourself unless you can easily do a couple pull ups or lift a 50lb weight. Definitely ensure the rods you use fit snugly. It's super satisfying to get the job done though.
>This work is risky, but the risk is comparable to doing your own car repairs, or climbing on the roof of your house to clean your gutters.
Notably, "unintentional fall" is the #1 cause of emergency department visits for adults [1], which is why I'd hire a professional to work on my roof too (and wince when they don't wear safety equipment). I'm not sure where "crushed by your own car" falls on the list, but while I'm perfectly comfortable digging around in the engine bay, you also could not pay me enough to crawl around under a poorly jacked-up car.
1. https://wisqars.cdc.gov/lcnf/