Converting a 1970s Dunwoody garage door to a torsion spring
The ranches and split-levels from Dunwoody’s first build-out came with their garage doors on extension springs, the long springs stretched along each horizontal track. When one of those springs snaps, the talk at the visit often turns to putting the door on a torsion spring instead. Most of that answer is up on the wall above the door.
Can a 1970s extension-spring garage door be converted to a torsion spring?
Most sectional doors can. Whether yours should be is decided above and around the door, by the room over the opening, the wood a spring bar would bolt to, and the door itself. At a visit for broken garage door spring repair in Dunwoody, the pro looks at all three before quoting a conversion. The in-kind fix stays on the table too, a new extension pair with safety cables threaded through it, at $180 to $300.
That quote is written at the house once the headroom and the header have been looked at. On a door that passes all three, it is the recommendation.
Is there room for a torsion spring over a split-level garage door?
A torsion setup needs about 12 inches over the door for the bar, the springs and a drum at each end. On the split-levels the garage sits on the lowest floor and its ceiling is the joists of the room above, so a duct run, a beam carrying the floor overhead or a storage shelf hung from the joists can sit where the bar has to go. Where that foot is taken, torsion hardware made for low headroom changes the price, and the number comes at the house.
What does the spring bar bolt to?
Three points carry it. A center bracket holds the fixed end of the springs and is lagged into a wood spring pad on the header, and an end bracket at each side is fastened at the top of the jamb. Every pound of spring tension on the door ends up in those bolts.
An extension-spring door never needed a spring pad, so on many conversions the pad is a new board, lagged into the framing above the opening. What it lags into is the question. On a 1970s opening that framing has been through fifty Georgia summers and the wood behind the header trim is rarely seen until a pad has to go on it.
The pro checks that wood before quoting. Soft wood means carpentry before the conversion, and rotted header and spring-pad wood gets replaced first so the bar goes up on something sound.
What if the door itself is near the end?
When the door is near the end, the conversion money is better spent on a new one. A wood door whose bottom section has gone soft, or whose sections have cracked along the hinges, is near the end whatever spring it hangs on. A new door arrives with its own torsion springs sized to it, so the garage ends up converted either way. Whether a Dunwoody door is worth repairing or replacing has its own page.
What comes off the garage walls in a conversion, and what goes up?
The spring hardware along the tracks comes down, and the new parts go on the wall over the door. The door and its tracks stay where they are. In the order it happens:
- The two extension springs come down, with the safety cables threaded through them.
- The pulleys go, one that rode on the end of each spring and one at the front of each track, along with the long lift cables that ran over them.
- The spring anchors come off the back track hangers. The hangers stay, since they still hold the tracks up.
- A torsion bar goes up across the wall over the door, on the new spring pad and the two end brackets.
- One or two torsion springs on the bar, sized to the door after it is weighed.
- A cable drum on each end of the bar, and new cables from the drums down to the bottom brackets.
Once the springs are set, the pro balances the door and re-checks the opener’s force setting. Since a wall-mount opener turns the torsion bar itself, the conversion is also what makes a wall-mount opener beside the door possible. The conversion runs $450 to $750, and the price page shows what a conversion costs next to a new extension pair.
What does a conversion change for the next spring that breaks?
A torsion spring that lets go stays on its bar and the door stays down. The job is then a torsion pair priced like any other spring job in Dunwoody. The 1976 to 1988 traditionals in Wynterhall, Redfield and the Branches are already on that schedule, their torsion springs now on a second cycle life, and a converted ranch in Kingsley or Mill Glen joins them.
A January freeze still breaks springs on a converted door. The morning after, the break shows as a gap in one coil above the door, not a spring hanging off the track or lying on the slab at the bottom of the garage stairs.
When it is time to call: spring repair in Dunwoody, extension or torsion.