If you’re looking at the garage door in your home or business and all you know for certain is that it’s been there since before you moved in, you’re right to start wondering how long a garage door can last.
Like many other parts of your home or business, garage door components have service lives that will end one day. Using your garage door beyond the recommended limits of these components will cost you in repairs, failures and other headaches — and even more so if they come about unexpectedly.
So today, we’ll discuss how long a garage door lasts — in theory, and in practice — and define what separates the two.
How Often Should a Garage Door Be Replaced?
A garage door, as a whole, doesn’t have an exact service life, so this question doesn’t have a straightforward answer. Manufacturer warranties often cover as little as three years from installation — but the right door with normal usage patterns will last decades, as long as 30 years if it’s minimally used and properly maintained.
This brings us to the realities of a garage door service life span. More than anything else, how much you use your garage door will determine how long its components last.
Some parts, like the springs that carry the load so your door can open and close easily, are explicitly rated for how many cycles they’re expected to last before needing replacement. A standard garage door spring is designed for about 20,000 cycles, meaning 20,000 opens and 20,000 closes, while a tension spring is designed for about 10,000 cycles.
Your garage door is made up of many different components, each with its own typical life span and sources of stress: springs, opener, tubes, drums, cables, rollers, tracks, brackets, hinges, weather seals, panels, etc.
When we decide a garage door needs replacement, it’s because so many of these parts have worn down in unison or can’t be easily replaced due to discontinued models that replacement is cheaper than repairing the various parts.
Keep in mind that as one part begins to have problems, it puts stress on other parts, which is why catching individual problems early and repairing them quickly will extend your garage door’s service life.
This is why it’s important to consider maintenance in service life. If you regularly maintain your garage door, including lubricating parts, repairing minor issues while they’re still minor, cleaning the door and its adjacent areas, etc., you can get far more time out of your components than you otherwise would.
That’s because you’re reducing the normal friction of operation, such as the risks of running over something that doesn’t belong or closing onto an obstruction. That’s how your garage achieves that 30-year service life people hope for.
Can I Install My Garage Door Myself?
Before you roll up your sleeves and try to DIY your garage door, stop. You can lubricate and clean your garage door, yes, but anything more complicated can quickly become not just difficult to do correctly but risky, with potentially lethal consequences.
People suffer serious injuries and even die from falling garage doors, springs violently releasing their tension, etc. Leave all the complicated upkeep to a professional!
If you think something on your garage door needs to be corrected, even if it doesn’t seem like a big deal yet, contact the experts at Overhead Door Company of Greater Cincinnati™.
Call 513-394-6938 today to learn more.
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