Does it seem like your garage door is taking forever to close these days? Maybe you stand there waiting and twiddling your thumbs, not wanting to walk away until it fully closes because part of you suspects it might not. Slow-closing garage doors can be frustrating, but this is not usually a hard problem for a garage door repair team to solve. There are two key problems that might be to blame for the loss of speed.
Lack of Lubrication
Lubrication keeps your garage door parts sliding past one another easily. The rollers, tracks, and pulleys should all be well-lubricated for your door to function well. The lubrication does tend to wear away over time. If components of your garage door ever become wet, they may lose some of their lubrication, too.
A garage door repair team can lubricate all of the moving parts of pieces of your garage door and opening mechanism. They generally use a specialized, garage door lubricant to do this. These lubricants are thicker than your average, all-purpose lubricant, which means they stick better and last longer. Once they've applied the lubricant, they'll open and close the door a few times. This serves two purposes. For one, it works the lubricant into the components. For two, it helps tell them whether the lack of lubrication was to blame for the slowing down of your garage door. If the door starts closing faster, then the lubricant was to blame.
Stretched Out Springs
Garage doors have either one or two springs, depending on the model. These springs are meant to hold tension against the door so it does not just drop down to the ground, all at once. However, as the springs are used, they stretch out. Sometimes they stretch so much that they lose tension and stop holding the garage door as tightly as they should. This can slow down the door's operation.
If lubricating your door does not speed it up, then your garage door repair team will likely respond by tightening the springs. If they are too loose, the garage door repair team may need to replace the springs. This is a somewhat more intensive repair, but should still only take a couple of hours.
If your garage door is taking way too long to close, call a garage door repair company near you like Plano Overhead Garage Door. They may need to lubricate the door, adjust the springs, or both.