Los Altos Hills, Sunnyvale
Torsion and extension spring repair for Los Altos Hills homes, built mostly in the 1970s, served by trucks from Sunnyvale, 6 miles down the road from here.
On the truck
We load the truck in Sunnyvale before we drive the six miles up to Los Altos Hills, so the springs that go on the truck are picked for what we expect to find here, not for a generic call.
Houses in this part of the service area went up mostly around 1976, a decade or more after the 1964 median for the wider area, which means torsion springs sized for the heavier wood and wood-overlay doors common to that build era, not the lighter steel sectional doors you see on older tracts closer to the valley floor.
We stock standard torsion springs in the wire gauges that cover most double and single doors from that period, plus extension springs for the smaller older openings that never got upgraded.
What we don't carry on the truck is every oddball length - a handful of custom doors up here were ordered with non-standard torsion tubes, and if we hit one of those, the spring has to be ordered and the job becomes two visits instead of one. That's the honest limit: we can fix almost everything on the first trip, not everything.
Symptoms
The call almost always sounds the same: the door is heavy, it won't lift past a foot or two, or it slammed down on its own and now the opener strains and clicks without moving it.
That's a broken torsion spring, usually, and on the 1970s-era doors common here it's often the original hardware or a first replacement that's finally worn out from sheer cycle count rather than from weather.
The climate through this part of the service area stays mild year-round, so it isn't rust or ice cracking the coil - it's metal fatigue after tens of thousands of open-close cycles. Sometimes it's one of the two springs on a double door, and the door tilts or binds on one side because the remaining spring is still carrying tension unevenly.
If you hear a loud bang from the garage at some point and the door won't budge afterward, that bang was the spring letting go. Don't force the opener past that point - it strains the motor and can bend the track.
DIY or pro
Torsion springs are wound under real tension and the winding bars for that job aren't something most homeowners keep in a drawer. We don't recommend doing this one yourself, and that's true regardless of how handy you are with the rest of the house.
What you can safely check before you call: whether the door looks level when it's down, whether there's a visible gap in the coil at the top of the door, and whether the cables on either side still look taut and seated on their drums.
If the door is a heavier wood or wood-overlay panel - common on the larger lots up here - the stored energy in a correctly sized spring is higher than on a standard steel door, and that's exactly the case where a mistake does real damage.
If you're set on doing your own research first, at least don't try to release or wind a spring with the door down and the opener still connected. Disconnect the opener, leave the spring alone, and call.
The repair
We start by measuring the door's weight and matching it against the spring's wire diameter, coil length, and wind direction - getting any one of those wrong leaves the door either too heavy to lift by hand or liable to slam shut fast.
On the older 1960s-70s stock that makes up most of this part of the service area, we also check the torsion tube and center bearing for wear, since original hardware from that era is often still in place and the bearing can be as worn as the spring.
Once the new spring is on and wound to the right number of turns, we balance the door - lift it halfway by hand with the opener disconnected and it should hold its position on its own. If it drifts up or drops, the spring tension needs adjusting before we call it done.
Last step is reconnecting the opener and running it through a full cycle to make sure the travel limits and force settings still match the new spring, since a spring swap changes how hard the opener has to work.
Watch-outs
The most common mistake we get called to fix after the fact is a mismatched spring - one that's close enough to lift the door but wrong for its actual weight, which either burns out the opener early or lets the door fall fast if the spring lets go again. On the larger, heavier doors found on some of the bigger lots up here, an undersized spring fails faster than it would on a lighter door, so getting the size right the first time matters more than it would on a standard tract house.
A cable that jumps its drum during a spring failure can also kink or fray, and if that happens we're not just swapping a spring, we're replacing cable too. We'll tell you straight if a door's track or hinges are worn enough that a spring repair alone won't hold - at that point the honest advice is sometimes a new door section, not another round of patching eighteen-year-old hardware.
Questions
About six miles. We run the truck out from Sunnyvale for every call, so there's no separate branch or depot in Los Altos Hills itself - just a straightforward drive each time a spring job comes in.
Possibly. Most homes in this part of the service area were built around 1976, and a fair number still have their original torsion hardware. If yours has never been replaced, age alone is a reason it's worth a look even if it hasn't failed yet.
Yes. We size the spring to the actual measured weight of your door, not a generic standard, which matters more on the larger wood and wood-overlay doors common on bigger lots here than it does on a standard steel sectional.
Most, not all. Standard torsion and extension springs for 1960s-80s era doors are on the truck. A handful of custom torsion tube lengths need to be ordered, which turns a one-visit job into two.
Explore more
Ready when you are
Sunnyvale Garage Door Pros repairs and installs garage doors, springs and openers in Sunnyvale, CA and the surrounding area.
