Garage Door Springs and Openers for Other Trades in the Garage

Why this matters

A garage door is the heaviest moving thing in most houses, and the springs that lift it hold enough stored energy to break bones. Electricians run circuits beside it, drywallers finish around it, handymen hang storage racks over it, HVAC crews put heaters in the corner of it, and painters work along its tracks. None of them are working on the door, and nearly every one of them can turn it into a hazard: a loosened bottom bracket, a shelf bolted to a track, a heater hung in the path of the door, or photo eyes knocked out of line so the door closes on whatever is under it.

Safety first

• Never loosen, remove or adjust anything that holds a spring, a cable or a bottom bracket. That includes the set screws on the spring's winding cones, the bolts at the bottom corners of the door where the cables attach, and the bearing plate bolts on the header. These parts carry the spring's force whether the door is moving or not.
• A door with a broken spring stays where it is. Do not run the opener, do not try to lift it by hand, and do not pull the emergency release cord while the door is open or partly open: with the spring broken, the release can drop the door's full weight. Keep people out from under it and call a garage door company.
• Before working in the door's path, unplug the opener (or switch off its circuit) so nobody presses a remote while you are on a ladder under the rail. Work with the door closed where you can. When you have to measure it open, leave the trolley engaged (never pull the release) and keep the ladder out from under the door's bottom edge.
• A cable that has come off its drum, or a door hanging crooked: stay out from under it and away from the cable path. Call the door company.

How the door is built

 INSIDE VIEW OF A SECTIONAL DOOR, LOOKING OUT

        HEADER (wall above the door)
  [end ]==TORSION SPRING ON SHAFT==[ end ]
  [plate] [drum]  [center   ] [drum] [plate]
     |      |      bearing      |
     |   cable     plate,  [OPENER HEADER BRACKET]
     |      |      lagged       | rail runs back to
  TRACK     |      to header    | motor on ceiling
  vertical  |                   |
  |  +------+-------------------+------+  |
  |  |   door sections, rollers in      |  |
  |  |   the tracks on both sides       |  |
  |  |                                  |  |
  |  [BOTTOM BRACKET]    [BOTTOM BRACKET]  |
  |   cable ends here,    under full       |
  |   spring tension      spring tension   |
 [PHOTO EYE]                    [PHOTO EYE]
  beam no higher than 6 in above the floor
 ================= FLOOR ====================

Torsion springs. One or two large coil springs on a steel shaft mounted on the wall above the door. Closing the door winds them; opening the door lets them unwind and lift. So a closed door has its springs wound tight, holding the most energy. The center bearing plate that anchors them is lagged into the header framing.

Drums and cables. A drum at each end of the shaft winds a steel cable that runs down to a bottom bracket on each lower corner of the door. The cables carry the spring's lift to the door.

Extension springs. On older or lighter doors, long springs run along the horizontal tracks overhead instead, stretched when the door is closed. Each should have a safety cable running through it so a broken spring cannot fly across the garage.

Tracks. Vertical tracks beside the opening and horizontal tracks running back toward the ceiling, held by brackets on the jambs and by hangers to the ceiling framing at the back. The door's rollers ride inside them, and alignment is what keeps the door from binding or jumping out.

The opener. A motor head hung from the ceiling, a rail from the motor to a bracket above the door, a trolley on the rail, an arm from the trolley to the door, and an emergency release cord, usually with a red handle, that disconnects the trolley so the door can be moved by hand.

Photo eyes. A sensor on each side of the opening, near the floor, shining a beam across it. Federal rules at 16 CFR Part 1211 require residential automatic openers made since 1993 to have entrapment protection meeting the UL 325 standard; on most openers that is a non-contact sensor like this plus a reverse-on-contact feature. Opener manuals set the beam no higher than 6 inches above the floor, so it catches a child or a pet lying down.

See related: Garage Door Diagnosis Reference.

What other trades must not do

Hang anything from the track, the track hangers or the opener rail. A shelf, a light, a hose reel or a bike hook bolted to a horizontal track adds weight and pulls it out of line, and the door starts binding, scraping and eventually jumping a roller. The rail is sized to guide the trolley, not to carry a load. The perforated angle hangers that hold the tracks to the ceiling are part of the track, not a handy place to anchor a storage rack.

Put anything in the door's travel path. An open door slides back along the horizontal tracks and sits near the ceiling. A storage rack, a ceiling-hung unit heater, a light fixture, a sprinkler pipe or a duct below that line gets hit by the top section when the door opens. Measure the open door before you hang anything.

Disturb the photo eyes. Painters tape them over or cover them, drywallers bump the brackets, and a crew stacks material in front of one. Knocked out of line, they either keep the door from closing at all (annoying, obvious) or get re-aimed by the homeowner higher up the jamb where the beam misses a child (dangerous, invisible).

Cut into the header. The spring's center bearing plate and the opener's header bracket are lagged into the header framing above the door. Drywall over it is fine; cutting, notching or replacing the blocking it lags into is not, without the door company present.

Feed the opener wrong. An electrician adding a receptacle for the opener puts it at the ceiling near the motor head, and garage receptacles generally need ground-fault protection (NEC 210.8(A), as adopted by your jurisdiction; check the edition). The low-voltage wires from the opener to the photo eyes and the wall button run along the walls and the track; stapling through one of them is a common cause of a door that suddenly will not close.

What a broken spring looks like

• A loud bang from the garage, often with nobody near the door.
• A torsion spring with a visible gap of an inch or two between its coils.
• The door suddenly very heavy, or the opener straining, lifting the door a few inches and stopping or reversing.
• Cables slack, or off their drums.
• An extension spring hanging loose or lying on the floor, held only by its safety cable.

Any of these means the door stays closed and unused until a door technician sees it. Tell the homeowner not to run the opener; with no spring, the opener tries to lift the full door and can damage itself or pull loose.

Worked example: a ceiling storage rack in a two-car garage

A handyman is hired to hang a 4 by 8 foot ceiling storage rack in a two-car garage. The ceiling is 108 inches high. The rack hangs 30 inches down from the ceiling at its deepest setting. The customer wants it right inside the door, "over the hood of the car."

Measure the open door. The handyman unplugs the opener after opening the door with it, then measures. The lowest point of the open door, the bottom edge of its back section lying under the horizontal tracks, sits 88 inches above the floor. The horizontal tracks run 114 inches (9 feet 6 inches) back from the door opening. The opener's motor head hangs on the centerline at 124 inches back.

Check the customer's location. The rack's bottom would be at 108 - 30 = 78 inches. The open door sits at 88 inches. The rack would sit 88 - 78 = 10 inches below the open door's lowest edge, so the door would hit it on the first opening. Raising the rack does not cure it, because inside the first 114 inches the space above the open door is taken by the tracks, their hangers and the opener rail.

Move it outside the door's envelope. The rack goes beyond the end of the tracks: it starts 120 inches back from the opening, 6 inches past the 114 inch track end, and runs 8 feet, so it ends at 120 + 96 = 216 inches, 18 feet back, inside the garage's 22 foot depth. It is set over the left bay with its inside edge 24 inches off the centerline, so it is clear of the opener's motor head at 124 inches back on the centerline.

Fasten to framing, not to the door. The rack's ceiling brackets go into the ceiling joists with the fasteners its instructions call for. The track's rear hanger angles are right there and tempting; nothing is bolted to them.

Restore the door, then check it. The handyman plugs the opener back in, closes the door with the wall button, then opens and closes it once more while watching the top section pass under the rack area. Then he checks the photo eyes: with the door closing, he passes a cardboard box (not a hand or foot) through the beam, and the door reverses. The ladder had brushed the left eye's bracket while he worked, and he confirms both indicator lights are steady before leaving.

The tally. Customer location rejected by 10 inches of overlap; rack moved to 120 to 216 inches back, clear of the track end and the motor head; nothing fastened to the door hardware; eyes still aligned and reversing.

What changes the answer

Low-headroom doors and high-lift doors. A low-headroom track or a high-lift door sits differently when open, sometimes much higher up the wall. Measure the actual open door every time rather than assuming a standard height.

A wall-mounted opener. Some garages use an opener mounted beside the door on the end of the torsion shaft, with no rail on the ceiling. The ceiling is freer, but the shaft end, the opener and its cable tension monitor sit on the side wall where a shelf might go.

One-piece tilt-up doors. Older one-piece doors swing out and up on heavy springs and pivoting hardware at the sides. The springs and arms are dangerous in a different way; keep clear of the side hardware entirely.

References

• U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 16 CFR Part 1211, safety standard for automatic residential garage door operators, and UL 325.
• National Electrical Code Section 210.8, as adopted by your jurisdiction.
• The opener and door manufacturers' installation manuals.
• See related: Garage Door Diagnosis Reference