Los Altos, Sunnyvale
Spring repair for Los Altos homes built around 1964, with torsion hardware sized for that era's heavier panels. We drive the 4 miles from Sunnyvale to do the job.
Symptoms
Most garage doors in Los Altos went up around 1964, which means a lot of them are still carrying a single torsion spring mounted on a center header bracket, built for a heavier wood or early-steel door than what gets made today.
When that spring goes, the door doesn't ease down, it drops, and if you try to lift it by hand it feels like it weighs twice what it should. Sometimes the first sign is a loud bang from the garage, a cable that's gone slack, or the opener straining and reversing itself halfway up.
On a single spring setup, which is common in this housing stock, a snapped spring usually means the door won't move at all until it's replaced, not repaired. Two-spring setups, more common on wider doors from slightly later remodels, sometimes still open rough on one side.
Either way, the giveaway is a door that one day was fine and the next day is dead weight, with no warning beyond maybe a slow sag over the prior few weeks.
Timing
We're based in Sunnyvale and Los Altos is about 4 miles out, so there's no long drive eating into the appointment.
Once the truck is there, a standard torsion spring swap on a residential door runs well under two hours for most jobs, start to finish, including a full safety check on the cables, rollers, and the bracket the spring hangs on.
Two-spring doors take a bit longer since both get replaced together, never just the one that broke, because mismatched spring age on the same door throws the balance off again within months. We don't quote a tighter window than that without seeing the door, since a stripped bracket or a stuck torsion bar on an older setup can add time.
Pricing
We don't post a flat number here because the cost on a 1964-era door depends on whether it's a single spring or two, what wire gauge the door needs, and whether the drum or bearing plate is also worn out, which is common once the original hardware has been cycling for six decades. What we can tell you is that in Los Altos, where median household income runs well above the regional figure, we see more owners choose to replace the full spring and bearing assembly together rather than patch just the broken part, since the opener and cables are usually the same age and about to follow. That's a judgment call we walk through with you on site, not a push.
Local causes
Serving Sunnyvale, CA
The housing stock across this part of the service area mostly dates to the 1960s and 70s, and Los Altos sits right at the middle of that with a median build year of 1964. Doors from that period were hung with torsion springs rated for the materials of the day, and those springs have a fixed cycle life regardless of how gently the door gets used. A spring doesn't fail because of one bad day, it fails because it's done 10,000-plus open-close cycles over fifty-odd years and the steel has fatigued. The mild temperate climate here doesn't speed that up much, no deep freezes to stiffen the coil or baking heat to warp the bracket, so when a spring in Los Altos lets go, it's almost always age and cycle count, not weather.
The repair
We start by letting the door down under control and locking it off before anyone touches the spring, since a wound torsion spring is the one part of this job that can genuinely hurt someone.
From there we pull the old spring, check the drums, cables, and the bearing plate at the center bracket for wear, since on a door this age those parts often need attention even when they're not the reason you called.
We set the new spring to match the door's weight and cycle it a few times before handing it back over, checking that it holds position at any height without the opener doing extra work.
If the opener itself is straining from years of compensating for a weak spring, we'll flag that too, though opener service is a separate call, not part of this repair.
On the truck
Because so much of Los Altos was built in that same mid-1960s window, we stock torsion springs and bearing plates sized for the common door widths and wire gauges from that era, not just whatever's standard today. That saves a special order on most calls. Where we come up short is unusual or custom door sizes outside the standard residential range, or hardware tied to a specific discontinued opener brand, those sometimes need a part ordered in, which can add a day or two. We'll tell you straight if that's the case rather than installing something that's close enough but wrong.
Questions
If the door is hard or impossible to lift by hand with the opener disconnected, it's the spring. If it lifts fine by hand but the opener won't move it, that's an opener issue, a separate repair from what's covered here.
We don't recommend it. On a two-spring door, both springs age at the same rate, so replacing only the broken one leaves a mismatched pair that strains the opener and usually fails again within months.
Yes, for standard residential sizes common in homes built around 1964, which covers most of Los Altos. Unusual door widths or hardware tied to a discontinued opener brand sometimes need a part ordered in.
About 4 miles from Sunnyvale, so travel time isn't a factor in scheduling the appointment.
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Sunnyvale Garage Door Pros repairs and installs garage doors, springs and openers in Sunnyvale, CA and the surrounding area.
