Why You Shouldn’t Attempt Your Own Garage Door Repair

Why You Shouldn’t Attempt Your Own Garage Door Repair

If your garage door isn’t operating correctly, you may soon find a new chore on your “honey do” list: “Fix.” Looking at it, you get two thoughts. The first may be, “Well, this shouldn’t be too difficult. All I have to do is disconnect that little do-hickey over there, replace that spring, reconnect the do-hickey and we’re back in action.” The second thought may be, “Whoa. It might look easy, but what if I mess something up? Or get hurt? Maybe I should call a technician in.”

Your Costs Could Skyrocket
You get up early on a weekend morning to start your repair. After watching several videos online, you’re sure you have the problem licked. You buy the replacement parts and get onto your ladder.

Several hours later, after buying still more parts, you finally give up. The garage still isn’t working and now, it’s making some weird noises. When you call a repair technician, he asks you if you tried to make any repairs yourself. You admit that you did and learn that you made a simple repair much more difficult and expensive. “If you’d just called us first, I could have come out and diagnosed, then repaired the original problem. Now, you still have that-and these other problems to boot.”

Voiding Your Warranty
You’ve heard of this issue before, when it comes to repairing your car, computer or another item. You dismiss caution, thinking that it’s just a way for door manufacturers and repair companies to make money off your broken door.

Actually, that isn’t so. The manufacturers of garage doors know just how dangerous and difficult it is to install and repair these doors. This is why they put the void clause into their warranties. They want you to call a repair company to ensure the repair is done correctly. They also want to ensure that, when a professional technician makes the needed repairs, you will have a working garage door. Installation and repair companies routinely inspect and guarantee the work they have done.

Garage Door Repair is Dangerous
Look at the size of the door. If you have a double-size garage the door, it is massive and extremely heavy. A trained technician knows just how to handle the width, weight and size of the door so he or she, along with your house and vehicles, will not be put into danger during while making repairs.

For automatic doors, you risk being electrocuted if you try doing the work yourself. You could suffer other injuries as well. If you mistakenly remove the wrong part, you could find a 200-pound door falling down on top of you. Protect yourself, your home investment and your vehicles and call a qualified repair company.

A Process that Looks Simple Isn’t
All automatic doors have several parts that connect to each other, as well as to the other end of the track and mechanism. Since you don’t know what could happen, you may think, “There’s the part I have to remove.” Only removing that part causes other parts to become disconnected. In addition, many of these parts are under extreme pressure. Pulling on and removing the wrong part could send a cable flying back right toward your face.