Garage door openers are the canary in the coal mine. Garage door openers are designed to last a lifetime. This is because they are not designed to pull much weight. A garage door opener is designed to lift no more than 20 pounds on a sustained basis. But the reality is that as door hardware ages and wears out the opener is forced to lift far more weight than it is designed for. So when openers fail its almost always because of undue loads imposed by worn door hardware.



Sacrificial opener parts. Openers are designed with parts that area designed to break if the springs, bearings or rollers impose too much sustained load on the opener. On Liftmasters, Craftsman, and Linear openers there are nylon drive gears that are designed to break if the loads imposed by the worn door hardware are excessive. In Genie openers there is a connecting trolley that is designed to disengage and strip if the loads imposed by the worn door hardware are too great. We carry all brands of sacrificial parts, drive gears, trolleys, etc to get you opener working again. But we also try to explain why the sacrificial parts have broken.

Force settings Most opener manufacturers have “Force settings” that can be adjusted to make the opener exert more strength when opening and closing the door. Often when door hardware ages the force settings get increased……. Having to increase the force settings to an opener is a sure sign that the door hardware is worn. But there are safety issues with increasing the force settings. In 1991 the government required that all new openers must have automatic reverse mechanisms that will sense if there is an object, person, or animal in the path of the door and will reverse before causing injury. Prior to that time many injuries and deaths were happening due to doors with that exerted overly strong lifting and closing forces. Doors amounted to slow moving guillotines. Since then the auto-reverse force settings and sensor eyes give double safety to garage doors and have greatly reduced the risks. Excessively increasing force settings can thwart some of the safety feature built in to the opener.

Our Hormann opener uniquely only applies the extra force to the final inch of closing so as to firmly close the bottom rubber seal against the concrete floor without gaps….. while keeping the low force settings until the final inch of closing. Our Liftmaster and Genie products have no such safeguard.

Power surges Power surges and lightning strikes can fry the circuit boards of openers. We carry circuit boards for all brands of openers on our trucks.

Each of our trucks carries a full line of our openers to suit your need and our service techs can install one on the spot as needed at any service appointment.