A broken spring is the single most common garage door failure we see, and it almost always happens the same way: the door worked fine yesterday, and today it will not budge. Here is what actually happened, and what fixing it should cost.
What a Spring Actually Does
People assume the opener lifts the door. It does not. A double garage door weighs 150 to 250 pounds, and a half-horsepower motor cannot lift that. The springs do the lifting — they store energy when the door closes and release it when the door opens. The opener only guides the movement.
That is why a door with a broken spring feels impossibly heavy by hand, and why forcing the opener to lift it will burn out the motor within a few tries.
Why They Break
Springs are rated in cycles. One cycle is one open and one close. A standard spring is rated for about 10,000 cycles, which sounds enormous until you count: a family that opens the door four times a day burns through 1,460 cycles a year. That is roughly seven years.
Three things shorten that in South Florida:
- Humidity and salt. Coastal homes lose springs years early. Corrosion creates a weak point, and the spring fails there rather than wearing evenly.
- An unbalanced door. If the spring tension was never set correctly, the spring works harder than it was designed to on every single cycle.
- A single-spring setup on a double door. Common in builder-grade installations. One spring doing the work of two wears out roughly twice as fast.
How to Tell If Yours Broke
- A loud bang from the garage, often at night as the metal contracts
- A visible gap in the coiled spring above the door
- The opener strains, hums, or moves the door a few inches and stops
- The door is extremely heavy to lift by hand
- The door opens crooked, or falls when you let go
What Replacement Costs
Our pricing in Miami-Dade and Broward: $180 to $350 for a single-spring replacement, and $300 to $550 for a double-spring job. The range depends on door weight, spring length and the cycle rating you choose. We quote the full price before starting, and the service call is free when the repair is completed.
Be careful with anyone advertising a spring replacement for $49 or $79. That number is for the visit, not the work, and the actual price appears once a technician is standing in your garage and your car is trapped inside.
Replace One Spring or Both?
If your door has two springs and one broke, replace both. They were installed the same day and have the same cycle count, so the second one is at the end of its life too. Replacing one now and the other in four months costs more in labor than doing both at once, and it means a second failure at an inconvenient moment.
Please Do Not Do This Yourself
This is the one garage door repair we tell people never to attempt. A torsion spring holds several hundred pounds of stored energy, and releasing it requires proper winding bars used correctly. Screwdrivers and rebar slip. Spring replacement causes serious hand and facial injuries every year, and the parts cost you save is not close to worth it.
Get It Fixed
We stock the common spring sizes on the truck, so most replacements are finished in one visit. We serve North Miami, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale and the rest of Miami-Dade and Broward. More detail on our spring repair page.
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