How much tension is there on a garage door's springs in the UP position?

[dean]

I am thinking of moving the opener motor up a little and need to undo it, just wondering if there is much tension in the springs that I should be aware of?

Thanks

Dean

[BobK207]

it, just wondering if there is much tension in the springs that I should be aware of?

Thanks Dean

[Amun]

There will still be at least enough tension to keep the door up. You may be surprised at how much that takes. See all the other posts about garage door springs, and what to expect.

But there should only be minimal tension on the door opener motor mechanism in ANY position. disconnecting the manual door release should eliminate that just to work on the drive.

AMUN

[Pop]

There "should" be very little tension in the up position, but don't count on it. Check it first!!

Why mess with the springs if all you are going to do is move the motor? Just disconnect the door with the emergency pull and then, while it's disconnected, push the control and let the empty maul pull into the up position, leaving the door itself in the down position.

If this doesn't make sense to you, perhaps you should consider getting some help.

And, if the door comes down when you take the springs off and disconnect the opener, it WILL destroy the door and/or tracks. Be very certain you reliably prevent movement of the door. And keep everyone away from it while you're working: a falling door could easily kill humans and pets when it hits its stops at the bottom or twists the tracks and falls out of them.

HTH

[dean]

Ok thanks all, that's great info there.

What I want to do is raise the GDO and the back end of the rails up about 18 inches, so that the door is raised higher than it is now. Then I can use a vehicle lift to a greater height. Does it matter if the upper rail sections slope down toward the front rather than being horizontal?

[dean]

I was thinking of removing both the curved sections of rail and cutting them shorted, so that the curve is less than 90 degrees. (I presume its not all one single piece.)

[dean]

Yes, I agree with all that you said. I was only thinking that for some reason it would be unsafe to have the door on a slope, if I left it open and, I dunno, the springs broke or something, it might just roll down and hurt someone.

I'll take a look at the rails tonight, to see if they can be modified.

Thanks,

Dean

[Edwin Pawlowski]

What type of spring? The coil springs or the torsion springs that are wound up? The coils have just about nothing on them.

[Pop]

PopS

[Jeff Wisnia]

I presume you are speaking about a garage door with two tension springs.

If so:

I can't see why what you propose won't work if you make your cuts very carefully and leave enough metal for the tabs at the ends of the curved sections which join them onto the straight sections. Some new joining holes may have to be drilled in them, of course.

Since the opener can already handle the force needed to start lifting the door from the fully closed position, it should have plenty of moxie to pull the door up the incline you are creating.

I don't think you'll even have to change the settings of the spring tension. Just measure their stretched length when the door is closed and get tham back to that length when you are done.

Oh, and if you don't have safety cables running through those expansion springs PUT SOME IN when you do the work. Those springs can flail around pretty good when an end eye snaps off. Safety cables are very cheap insurance against someone getting beaned.

HTH,

Jeff

[Beachcomber]

There is enough tension is the springs to kill or seriously injure you if you don't know what you are doing. They do have a life cycle and they do break when stressed.

The practical benefit of springs is that they allow less force to be used when lifting the door, thus, smaller horse-power motors can be used in your garage door opener. Maximum tension on the spring is when the door is in the down position.

Proper adjustment of the spring(s) (typically there are two of them) requires training and experience. Garage door service companies are located in every major city.

If you need to work on your garage door opener, there should be an isolating pull level on the door. This is typically used to allow the door to be operated when there is a power failure. The springs are still part of the door system, however.

Beachcomber

[Pop]

The poster who mentioned the safety wires had good advice too. I had a spring end snap off once and it brought down ten feet of metal shelving along with it, plus the spring put a dent half an inch deep into the wooden header over the garage door. Fortunately I was standing on the other side of the garage at the time. The spring itself broke right where it hooked into the eyebolt. Actually the spring itself wore thin from years of use. I grease the spring points now and you can safely assume I now have safety wires inside the springs. It was simple to do; just a few feet of aircraft wire the right length and fastened right. A guy at Overhead Door showed me how to set it up. The one here is a great place; very helpful to the diy'er.

AFter replacing the springs, just for grins, I attached one to the wall and a piece of pipe thru the other end and there was no way I could stretch that spring out as long as my garage door did with two of them. Wooden garage doors are VERY heavy!

BTW, I still think the whole door should be level on top, but in looking at my own setup today (9' wide x 8' high), I'll bet you -could- turn the 90 degrees into something smaller by trial and error by just grinding away metal where they fasten together, so it might not be such a huge job.

If you don't know how to calculate it, come on back with the -horizontal- length of the track from where it turns into horizontal to the farthest away point where the eighteen inch rise has to happen, and I'll figure it out for you unless you already know how to do that.

Assuming a ten foot long track, which many are, moving one end of it up 18" would result in a slope of about 8.5 degrees, not a whole lot of metal to grind off. By grinding the old holes would probably still be usable, but ... you'd want to provide some extra external bracing to hold the angles in place; an easy enough task, esp if you have rivet gun.

BUT ... I'm not sure I see how that would give you much improvement on getting more space underneath the door when it's in the up position. At the 5' point you'd only gain 4.5", 2

1/4" at the quarter point, and so on.

So perhaps that's another arguement for raising the whole track up. I think it'd be a lot easier to just add a short piece of vertical track to lift the whole thing up than it would be to mess with changing the angle and ending up with an incline.

And please, don't even consider working on this with the door up. Disconnect it and leave the door down to work on it. In case you should have to take the door off, you START with the top section first, and when you put it back, START with the bottom section first. Don't try to take it out in one piece unless it's ultralight and you're near superman.

HTH

PopS

[Edwin Pawlowski]

This is for the torsion springs found over the top of the door opening. This does not apply to the coil springs that are along the sides next to the track. Step one is to determine what type you have.

[dean]

Thanks all especially Pop for that huge reply!

Ok I took some measurements. The rail has a 12" radius bend, so I was told (though it seems more like 15" to me). Guys said it could also go on a 32"" bend, which would raise the rails up by 20 inches. Door is

16' wide x 7' high, vinyl or plastic surface on a wooden subframe.

The current opener has to go up 32" (more that I had originally thought). Right now it sits about 5 inches below what I think is horizontal. If I pull this up 10 inches so its angled the other way, it would still be almost flat. So now I have 30 inches (from the 20" increase in radius plus lifting up the motor 10". Ok I can live with that. Can this work? Rails would be horizontal too. I also have to know if the door will come back any more this way, because the back of the motor is flush below a large steel I-beam in the middle of the room, so I can't go back any more than that. If someone wants to see a pic I could email you!

Dean

[Jeff Wisnia]

Agreed, but did you take into account that the free spring end only moves half as far as the door travels, so the spring has to pull twice as hard as the amount of door weight it is supporting?

Wouldn't it be 9" gain at the 5' point?

The OP said it was to gain clearance for a car lift, and most cars are taller near their centers than they are at the back, so I'd guess he'd gain at least a foot of extra lift clearance in a typical length garage.

Might be, but then he'd have to extend the opener to door linkage too. (More work)

And, in the "up" position quite a bit of the bottom end of the door wouldn't be on the horizontal portion of the track anyway, which gets us back to the problem of gravity making it drop if all the wrong things let go.

I say that because in all probability his existing opener won't have enough travel to pull that door "all the way up" onto the horizontal portion of the track. If it's a chain type he could extend the rail and add more chain (more work) IF the up/down limit switch system could accomodate 18" of extra opener travel.

If it was a screw type opener hed be screwed. :-)

I think he's on the right "track" with the tilted rails. He'd have to have the opener to door link fail at the same time as at least one of the springs to have the door come crashing down, and that's not likely to happen save for when the door is in motion.

I don't make it a practice to stand in the door opening while the door is moving, would you?

Amen to that, Pops. I got smart real quick and added safety cables to both our single width garage doors when one spring let go and punched quite a big hole through the drywall over the garage door opening. I wasn't hit, but I was in the garage when it happened and I nearly cracked my head on the ceiling jumping when that "big bang" occurred.

I didn't know what strength springs to go out and buy so I measured the downforce weight of the hollow core multipanel door with our bathroom scale. The scale only went up to 250 lbs, so I had to rig a 2:1 lever system from a short length of 2 by 4 and a brick so that the scale read half the door weight, which was 300 lbs.

Jeff

[Michael Baugh]

[Rich]

A 7' high door's horizontal track is approximately 8'4" long so a 18" rise will give it an approximate pitch of 10 degrees. You can raise the track at the rear, but you will have to change your system over to torsion springs. Extension springs would not be suitable for this application because the door will hang in the header due to gravity, incline and weight of the door. If you add tension to the springs to keep it out of the header then the springs will be too strong at the floor. If you rely on your opener to keep the door out of the header you will overwork your opener. You will have to use torsion springs. In which case the drums that you will have to use as well as the springs and the length of the cable will have to be calculated based on the pitch of the tracks, height and weight of your door.

Rich

[doordoc]

No the door shouldn't go back any further, but the door probably won't open all the way. If you raise the front of the opener 20" that means the opener arm will have to be 20" longer then it is now & most likely the arm will run into the motor head way before the door is fully open.

Personally I would agree w/ Rich that sloping the track will give you many issues & in my opinion if you could get the door to work at all it would work like crap without changing parts to compensate for the difference in weight when the door is open.

Doordoc

[Pop]

Actually, it sounds like that would work if you have room for the

20" rise at the door. The main thing, IMO would be to keep the tracks as reasonably close to level as you can but perfection isn't necessary. I think you have a workable solution, IMO at least.

Be certain you keep those track to track spacings right, and when you lift the door by hand for the first time, closely watch the rollers to be certain nothing is being stressed or pulled out of position.

PopS

20" : increase in radius plus lifting up the motor 10". Ok I can live with : that. Can this work? Rails would be horizontal too. I also have to know : if the door will come back any more this way, because the back of the : motor is flush below a large steel I-beam in the middle of the room, so : I can't go back any more than that. If someone wants to see a pic I : could email you! : : Dean :

[Pop]

It's just my opinion, but:

"Rich" I don't see the need to be switching to torsion springs for a couple of reasons:

1. Cost of the new system
2. Harder to work on without rather specialized tools
3. They cannot lift a door any further into the tracks than the location of the springs; the other type can move the door completely away from the header if you have the track room.

: Extension springs would not be suitable for this application because the : door will hang in the header due to gravity, incline and weight of the door. ===> Disagree. To keep the door out of the header you simply adjust the stop-point. It's the opener that determines where the door will stop, not the springs. : If you add tension to the springs to keep it out of the header then the : springs will be too strong at the floor. ===> It's not tension that keeps it out of the header; it's the opener motor stop point and the physical position of the rotary springs.

If you rely on your opener to keep : the door out of the header you will overwork your opener. ===> No, you will not. The door is at its lightest drag on the motor in the up position and the motor of a non-torsion system can pull the door as far back as the system tracks will allow. It's a very small load on the opener compared to when the door is fully closed and starts to open.

You will have to : use torsion springs. In which case the drums that you will have to use as : well as the springs and the length of the cable will have to be calculated : based on the pitch of the tracks, height and weight of your door. ===> I don't know what you're on about here. There is a system already in place which can easily be modified to meet the requirements. The OP is simply trying to do it safely but with a minimum of cost. : : Rich :

===> I'm not trying to mandate for no torsion spring systems; it's just that this is an already workable and modifiable system and the expense of a new install just isn't called for.