Your garage door is one of the most frequently used parts of your entire home. With many working parts that vary from heavy to light, these parts can wear down over time. Each component of your garage door plays a major role in its overall function. If one of the parts is not performing to its optimal capacity, then the rest will begin to follow suit. Making your personal care and maintenance of the utmost importance to help prevent garage door maintenance and repairs.
Here are 7 Garage Door Preventative Maintenance Tips You Can Do Yourself.
- Use Your Eyes & Ears
The first thing you want to do before you try and do anything is simple. Just look and listen. Operate your garage door and watch it as it moves up and down. Listen to the sounds that it makes as its parts begin to work together. Is anything out of the normal? Is it making a noise that you do not recognize? Are parts like the cables, pulleys, and springs working efficiently or are they shaky and seem about to break?
- Fasten Up All Hardware
As we mentioned before, garage doors are used consistently throughout your busy life. Moving up and down all the time can cause some of the fastening parts of the garage door (bolts & hardware) to loosen over time. This does not mean you have a defected garage door; loosened hardware can just happen over time. If one of your bolts is beginning to get loose than your entire garage doors alignment and function can be thrown off.
Grab your toolset and disconnect the power to your garage door opener. Grab the correct size wrench and double-check each bolt that you can see to ensure that they are fastened. By doing this, you will avoid potential significant damage to your garage door and eliminate a possible phone call to get garage door maintenance and repairs.
- Check Your Garage Doors Balance
When your garage door is not balanced, the garage door opener will not run smoothly. When it tries to move up and down, it is required to work harder than it should have to. Over time, this will cause the garage door opener to begin to break down.
Disconnect the power to your garage door opener by pulling down the dangling red cord. Once you have done that you will need to pull the garage door up halfway manually. Once you have it lifted half-way let go and see what happens. If the door falls to the ground either slowly or fast—than it is off balance.
This means that the counter-weight system is in need of some maintenance, and although checking this can be done by you—we highly recommend hiring a professional for Chicago garage door spring repair.
- Lube Moving Parts
This is one of the most important and yet most neglected tasks you can do on your own. Garage doors have a lot of working parts, working parts that are made of metal. These parts rub and move against each other and as we all know—metal on metal is not always smooth sailing. If you can routinely make a commitment to greasing and oiling your garage door, you can add years of operation to your system.
It only will take you 10-15 minutes to complete. Use white lithium grease on your garage door opener’s chain or screw, and spray a light coat of lubricant on your overhead springs. Increasing efficiency and reducing rust to help you prevent future garage door opener maintenance.
- Test Auto-Reverse Safety Feature
Your garage door’s auto-reverse safety feature has two working mechanisms: mechanical & photocell. You can test both of these mechanisms on your own by following these helpful tips.
To test your mechanical feature, you can just place a piece of wood on the ground in your doors track path. When the door begins to come down check to see that when it touches the wood, it reverses direction.
To test the photocell mechanism, press the button to close your garage door. Once the door begins to lower just place your foot across the sensory beams. If the garage door stops and moves back up—than your photocells are working properly.
Did either of your tests fail? It is time for a new garage door opener.
- Clear Tracks
A very straightforward and quick one. Check the tracks of your garage door on both sides to ensure there are no debris or other parts that may interfere with its operation. Random pieces of debris can stick to these tracks, and it may be as easy as wiping or scraping it away.
- Keep Exterior Looking New
Of course, you want your garage door to look nice. If your garage door is made of wood, check for water damage or old and chipped paint. If it needs a new coat, sand and scrape off the old and paint on a new layer. If you have a steel door, sand off the rust sports and wipe it down with a mild all- purpose cleaner whenever you are out washing your car.
Applying these 7 different preventative maintenance tasks to your garage door can help you avoid hiring a professional. But keep in mind that some of these tasks may reveal a deeper issue and if that is the case, you must hire a Chicago garage door technician.