Your door won't budge and you heard a bang loud enough to wake the neighbors. That was a torsion spring snapping. Don't try to lift the door by hand, a 16-foot door without working springs weighs 280 pounds and that weight has nowhere to go but your foot. Call us. Most spring calls in Madison get a same-day window, often within three hours. We carry galvanized oil-tempered springs sized for your door on the truck.
Garage Door Spring Repair pricing: Most spring repair jobs land somewhere between $220 and $420, depending on whether you need a single torsion replaced, a matched pair, or an extension swap on an older one-piece system. Diagnostics run $89 flat and are waived when we do the repair on the same visit.
When we show up, the first thing is to verify the door's weight with a hand scale. A 16-foot insulated panel runs anywhere from 220 to 320 pounds, and the spring has to match. Guessing here is how doors crash. We pull the broken spring off the torsion tube, slide the new one on, and wind it to the correct turn count for your door height. Wisconsin matters here. Garages that swing from negative twenty in January to ninety in July put extra stress on the coil steel, so we install springs rated for at least 15,000 cycles when we can. After winding, we balance the door at the halfway point and run the opener through three full cycles before we leave. Total time on site is usually under 90 minutes for a single, around two hours for a matched pair.
Easiest test is to pull the manual release rope, which disconnects the door from the opener trolley. Then try to lift the door by hand. If it stays up about halfway on its own, springs are fine and your opener is the problem. If it slams down or feels like dead weight, a spring is broken. You can also look at the spring above the door. A broken torsion spring has a visible gap of an inch or two between coils. Springs almost always fail with a loud bang, so if you heard one earlier in the day, that's your answer.
On a dual-spring torsion setup, we strongly recommend replacing the matched pair. Both springs were installed the same day and have logged the same cycle count, so if one let go today, the other is weeks behind. A single torsion spring runs $220 to $320 installed. A matched pair runs $320 to $420, which is a small premium to avoid a second service call and a second trip charge inside the year. On single-spring doors we just replace the one. Extension springs we also do in pairs, $180 to $280 for the set.
Two reasons. First, Madison's freeze-thaw climate is hard on springs, so we stock higher cycle-count springs (15,000 to 25,000 cycles) instead of the 10,000-cycle builder-grade most national chains use. The upcharge on the part is small but meaningful. Second, we carry galvanized, oil-tempered springs sized to your door's exact weight rather than a one-size-fits-most spring. Pricing still lands in the $220 to $420 range for most jobs, which is in line with what other local outfits charge. The diagnostic is $89 flat and waived when you move forward with the repair.
Most spring jobs run 60 to 90 minutes from the truck pulling up to the door cycling smoothly on its own. That includes unwinding the old spring safely, swapping cables if they're frayed, installing and winding the new pair, balancing the door at the midpoint, and testing the opener force settings against the new spring tension. If we find a stripped center bearing or a bent shaft along the way, add 30 to 45 minutes. We carry the common parts on the truck so a second trip is rare.
We carry the eight most common torsion sizes on every truck, sized for door weights from 130 pounds (single 9-foot uninsulated) up through 280 pounds (16-foot insulated double). That covers about 90 percent of Madison-area homes. We also carry the standard extension springs. If you have a custom carriage-house door or an oversized commercial spring, we'll measure on the first visit and order it. Custom springs usually arrive in two to four business days from our Milwaukee distributor, and we don't charge a second trip fee for the install.
Manufacturer warranty on the springs we install is five years against defects. Our labor warranty is one year, which covers the install workmanship including winding, cable seating, and door balance. If a spring breaks inside the warranty window and it's a defect (not impact damage or rust from a flooded garage), we replace it at no charge for parts and labor. Keep your invoice; it has the spring lot number we need to file the warranty claim. We've never had a customer pay twice inside the warranty period for the same spring.
