Garage Doors - A Brief Tutorial on Garage Door Safety and Installation

As a door expert witness, I'm called upon often per year to evaluate garage door injuries. Garage doors come in many shapes and sizes. Their functions range between basic security of an area to cosmetic concealment. Most doors could be broken down into several basic styles or categories. Typical modern garage doors for residential applications are generally predominantly of the overhead sectional variety. That style of door is available in many configurations, materials, quantities of insulation, and a wide range of appearance possibilities.

They're available as a prefabricated kit, or built as a custom design to fit the dacor of any building. Commercial warehouse type installations often dictate higher security requirements. A good choice because of this security kind of door may be the "roll-up" style that resembles a spin top desk kind of door. This door could be manufactured with a number of materials that is often as strong because the adjacent walls, making forced entry through this opening very difficult. Other common commercial installations include lightweight aluminum single or sectional panel doors. These doors function more for closing off a currently secured area than for assuring point security.

Before, the largest concern with operating an overhead garage door was the potential risks associated with the springs employed for balancing the doorway weight. Pre mid 1960's garage door installations typically relied upon a set of stretched (tensioned) springs to help the operation of the garage door pivoting hinges. These springs became loaded (tensioned) as the doorway was moved in to the closed position. Unloading (releasing) of the stored spring energy occurred as the doorway was opened to the horizontal overhead position. One of the most dangerous areas of these spring systems was that if a period of time, often without any maintenance or inspection, the points of attachment of those springs would rust or become weak.

This weakening of the springs or points of attachment would often lead to an inadvertent explosive failure flinging the broken spring components across the garage, embedding the spring or steel components in to the garage walls, cars or other things in the path of travel. Unfortunately, sometimes everyone was in the path of travel of those explosive occurrences. As these springs failed, being an attempted safeguard, some manufacturers devised a "caging" system for the springs. These cages were retrofitted onto the stretched springs in an effort to fully capture the parts that would release if a failure occurred. While these caging devices were helpful, these were not completely effective. Many of these spring devices remain being used today. Whenever this condition exists or the quality of garage components are questionable, a qualified professional service technician should really be consulted.

In reaction to the inherently dangerous traditional style garage spring issues as above, a newer and safer system for opening the overhead Garage Door Repair Newburyport MA was created. The theory was to transfer force or weight of the doorway using a cable and pulley system to a straight rod now designed with a torsion (twisted) spring. This sort of spring is installed with specialty hardware and bolts to a fixed plate at one end, while the entire spring is installed around an outside pipe. This load balancing device is normally installed directly within the header of the garage opening. Using appropriate cables, connectors and pulleys, the weight of the garage door is transferred in to the torsion spring system.

The difference between the traditional style stretched spring and the newer torsion spring is the way that the spring energy is stored. With the traditional style stretched spring, the vitality is stored and released by pulling on the spring or returning the spring to its un-stretched condition. With a torsion kind of spring, the vitality is imparted or removed by rotating the spring clockwise or counter clockwise depending upon the direction of usage. With professional installation, the complete loading of the torsion spring is controlled by the garage installer, and is decided by the weight and size of the garage door that it is operating. When this sort of torsion spring fails, it remains attached and intact to the positioning on the horizontal control rod where it was mounted. I have not been aware of or seen any torsion spring fly across a storage, creating injury from failed components much like the stretched older style garage door springs.

That is not to imply that injuries have not occurred with the torsion style spring. The installation of this sort of spring is generally safe when left to a skilled garage door installation professional. Severe and serious injuries have occurred when untrained, unqualified individuals have attempted to put in or service this sort of spring. Generally in most installations, a notice tag is left attached adjacent to the torsion spring when the garage door is installed. This tag warns of the danger associated with the stored energy of this spring, and alerts untrained individuals not to attempt any repair, adjustment or to even touch the spring and associated hardware. When the label that ought to be attached to this spring becomes damaged, is removed or tampered with, it is essential that the new warning label be reattached immediately to exhibit the dangers of this spring tension

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