If your garage door is making weird noises or looks uneven, it’s balance may be way off. Properly balanced garage doors have evenly distributed weight due to properly operating springs – ensuring that weight and tension is evenly spread out so that the garage door opener isn’t stressed out, and so that the door opens smoothly without too much sound. When garage doors are unbalanced, openers are strained; here’s a guide from the garage door repair experts here at Garage Door Repair Chicago on how to check your garage door balance.
Tag Archives: Garage Door Repair
Garage doors that suddenly seem to be opening and closing with much less speed provide great inconvenience to homeowners that may be in a rush to enter or exit their home, not to mention being less energy efficient and indicating that it may be time to replace the garage door opener itself. In this blog entry, the garage door repair experts here at Garage Door Repair Chicago will provide some remedies for slowly opening garage doors.
Did you hear a sudden loud noise from your garage that was reminiscent of fireworks? You might notice when you check it out, that the spring on the garage door is suddenly bisected into two pieces. You might guess it’s not too difficult to repair, but in fact, repairing garage springs is a dangerous operation that should only be attempted by professionals. A garage door’s full weight is passed through it’s included spring system, a weight that can range between a hundred and twenty five to three-hundred pounds – serious weight that’s no joke. Here’s a guide from the garage repair experts here at Garage Door Repair Chicago on garage springs, and what exactly makes their repair such a technically difficult operation.
Steel garage doors usually experience a higher degree of rust than garage doors made of fiberglass composites. These rust issues can quickly start affecting proper operation of your garage door – and they need to be handled as soon as possible in order to prevent costly damages. Here’s a guide to removing garage door rust, as prepared by the garage door repair experts at Garage Door Repair Chicago.
First Step
Wash the garage door by spraying a mix of 5 drops of liquid detergent mixed with hot water. Wipe the door down with a clean rag, and hit tough spots with a scrubbing brush. By removing buildup and dirt you can more easily identify what parts are rusted. Then, dry the door as you wash it, so you don’t create any sudden rust.
Second Step
Sand off all rust. This will likely require a good deal of force. Sand off the entire rusted area including paint, at least 2 inches past the rust that you can see to make sure you get all of it. You can do this with sandpaper, or even better, with a power sander.
Third Step
Clean all sanded areas, and use a bristle broom to remove dust from the sanding. Then wipe the whole area down again with your cleaning detergent solution, and dry it, to make the paint stick to the metal more easily,.
Fourth Step
Apply a thin even coat of primer with a rag or paintbrush. Make sure that the primer overlaps the painted parts that were not sanded, as the primer’s oil will stop water or moisture from hitting the metal garage door. You may want to apply two coats, however, let at least 1.5 hours elapse between coats to let the primer dry completely before recoating.
Fifth Step
Use paint that matches the existing paint to cover up the primer and the areas that have been sanded. Apply thin even coats – as many as necessary to ensure that the parts that were sanded perfectly blend it with the painted parts of the door that were not sanded; again, ensure that at least 1.5 hours elapse between coats, so that the paint can dry fully.