How Does Winter Effect Your Garage Door?

We aren’t quite to winter yet, but we all know that here in Utah, fall only lasts a matter of weeks. We go from warm weather to frigid and freezing temperatures fairly quickly, and within the next month, you can expect to see quite a drop in temperatures. In fact, this winter is supposed to be pretty intense and much colder than the last few winters. What does this have to do with your garage door? Winter actually has a pretty big effect on the mechanisms within your garage door.

Broken Garage Door Springs

One of the most common garage door issues we see during the winter months is issues with broken springs. Normal wear and tear will wear down on your springs, sure. Garage door springs will last you about 10,000 cycles before they should be replaced. How do you check and see if your springs need to be replaced? Manually open your garage door about halfway and then let go. If the door stays in place, then your springs are fine. If the door moves down a little, it’s probably time to have someone come and replace the springs before they give way entirely. Another great way to prevent damage to your springs is to make sure that you have a safety cable installed onto your garage door that will catch the door if it begins to fall, to prevent additional damage taking place.

Water damage

Snow is just frozen water. So even though it is frozen, it is natural to assume that some water damage could occur this winter to your garage. This is most often the problem with wooden garage doors, because the precipitation will cause the door to swell. We recommend keeping your rain gutters clear so the water runoff will be directed away from your garage door. If you start to notice swelling, have one of us come and check it out.

Garage door frozen to the ground

If water pools at the bottom of your garage door, and then freezes, you’ll find yourself unable to open your garage door in the morning. Here are a few methods to try to get your garage door open.

-Manually open the door. As long as the freezing isn’t too severe, this option should solve the problem.

-Scrape at the chip with an ice scraper.

-Dump hot water at the base of your garage door to melt the ice. You have to be careful with this method, as if you use too much water you could create more ice, depending on the time of day and the temperature outside.