Garage Door Repair &
Installation in Lynnwood, WA

The split level garage is where we most often find extension springs on a door that would have been better served by torsion, simply because the headroom was tight when it was installed. When one of those springs goes it usually announces itself with a bang and a door that will not lift. We replace them correctly rated, with containment cables through the coils, and where the clearance allows we offer a conversion to a torsion shaft, which balances the door better and keeps the spring contained above the opening.

On the newer doors it is torsion work, replaced in pairs on a double, sized to the measured weight of the door rather than to the label. High cycle springs are worth the small premium on any door that opens more than a couple of times a day, which in a house with a converted garage or a rental is most of them. Before touching the release cord, read how to recognize a broken spring; before budgeting, what spring replacement costs.

Replacing a door on a mid century Lynnwood house usually means the tracks, springs and often the opener get brought up to date in the same visit, because what came with the old door was sized for that door. On a split level we measure the headroom and side room before we quote anything, so the door and hardware we propose actually fit the garage rather than the catalog garage.

An insulated steel door earns its keep here for the room above the garage as much as for the garage itself. Styles and colors are wide open on most Lynnwood streets, since associations are less common than in the newer plats to the east, but where there is one we get the paperwork to you first. Old door removed and hauled. If you are unsure whether the door is worth saving, our guide to repairing versus replacing lays out the deciding factors, and the installation page covers the rest.

Low headroom and a bedroom overhead make the opener choice in a split level fairly simple: a wall mounted jackshaft unit where the torsion setup allows it, since it needs no ceiling rail at all and is the quietest option we fit, or a belt drive where a rail is unavoidable. A chain drive bolted under somebody’s bedroom floor is the thing we are most often asked to replace.

For a rental or a converted garage, an opener with a keypad and multiple remotes saves a lot of friction, and phone control lets an owner check the door is shut without driving over. Battery backup is worth having anywhere the garage has no side door. Wi-Fi reach is checked before we specify a model. More detail on the opener page.

On the 1970s and 1980s doors that are still common here, the cables and rollers are often the originals, and the first symptom is noise rather than failure: a grind or a squeal on the way up that carries straight into the room above. Steel rollers with dry bearings are the usual cause, and nylon rollers with sealed bearings are the fix that also takes most of the noise away.

A cable that has started to fray is replaced as a pair, with the drums and bottom brackets checked, and the door reset square in the tracks. If the door has already dropped on one side, stop using the opener until we arrive, because driving the motor against a jammed door damages the opener too. Hearing something new? Our guide to garage door noises tells you what each one is likely to be.

A tune up on a mid century door is where the small things that have been drifting for decades get put back: spring tension, track alignment, the brackets that have loosened under the joists, the weather seal that gave up years ago on a sloped driveway. For a door that has been in service since the 1980s it is also a safety check, because the reversal and the photo eyes on an older opener are exactly the things nobody has tested.

We start with the balance test, opener disconnected, then adjust the spring tension, tighten hinges, rollers and brackets, align the tracks, lubricate properly, look at the weather seal, reset the opener force and limits, and finish by testing the reversal two ways. For landlords we can put this on an annual schedule. Details on our maintenance page.