West Pasco, Kennewick
West Pasco homes mostly date to 1989, which decided the spring hardware on your door. We bring the right torsion and extension stock out from Kennewick, 4 miles away.
The repair
Most garages in this part of the service area went up around 1989, give or take a few years either side. That's the window when steel sectional doors on torsion springs were becoming the standard replacement for the older extension-spring setups builders had used through the 70s. If your house falls in that range, the spring over your head is almost certainly a torsion spring on a center shaft above the door, wound to a tension rated for the door's weight and cycle count. A full repair means unwinding what's left of the broken spring safely, matching the new one to the door's exact weight and wire gauge, and checking that the drums, cables, and bearing plates it shares the shaft with aren't also worn out. On a door this age, the spring is rarely the only part asking for attention - it's just the one that failed first.
Warning signs
The door won't lift, or it lifts a few inches and stops, or the opener strains and reverses itself halfway up.
Sometimes you'll hear the snap first - a loud bang from the garage, usually first thing on a cold morning, which is just the spring letting go under tension. On the double-car doors common in this stretch, a single broken spring on a two-spring setup can still let the door limp open, heavy and crooked, which is worse for the opener and the track than if it simply refused to move.
If the door is noticeably heavier on one side when you lift it by hand with the opener disconnected, that's the spring, not the opener, and it's not safe to keep running the opener against it.
On the truck
We carry torsion springs sized for the two-car openings that came standard on houses built through the late 1980s and 90s, since that's most of what's on garages in this area, plus a smaller stock of extension springs for the older or retrofitted doors still running them. Given the cold moderate winters this part of the state gets, every spring job gets the shaft and bearings greased for cold-weather stiffness before we leave, not just the new spring bolted on. We don't stock every size for every custom or oversized door on the first trip - if your opening is unusual, that part may need to be ordered, and we'll tell you that up front rather than guess at a fit.
Watch-outs
With a median household income here well above the rest of the service area, we more often get asked for the cycle-rated upgrade spring rather than the cheapest matching replacement - a spring built to survive two or three times as many open-close cycles before it fatigues out.
That's a fair trade if you plan to be in the house a while. The other complication is age-specific: because so many of these doors date to the late 1980s and 90s, we still run into single-spring torsion setups that were standard then, not the double-spring safety setups current code calls for on newer installs.
Replacing a single spring with a matched double-spring system costs more up front but means the door doesn't come crashing down unsupported if one spring ever fails again. We'll lay out both options and let you choose; we won't push the upgrade on a door that doesn't need it.
DIY or pro
A torsion spring is wound under enough tension to break bones or worse if the winding bars slip, and there's no version of this job that's safe to learn on your own garage door. We won't walk you through it over the phone, and that's one limitation we're upfront about - some trades will talk you through a repair to save a truck roll, we won't on this one. What you can safely check yourself: whether the door is noticeably heavier on one side when lifted by hand with the opener unplugged, and whether the spring is visibly separated at a gap in the coil. Either sign means stop using the opener and call it in.
Pricing
We don't have a flat number to quote here since it depends on whether you need one spring or a matched pair, standard torsion or the higher cycle-rated spring, and whether the drums or cables need replacing alongside it. What we can tell you is that the job starts the same way whether you're four miles from our Kennewick shop or further out: we bring spring stock sized for the door openings common on houses built here in the late 80s and 90s, because that's what's on most garages in this area, and that keeps most jobs to a single visit. For the broader picture on how we price spring work out of Kennewick, see our spring repair page.
Questions
Torsion springs are rated for a set number of open-close cycles, not a set number of years, and they usually let go without much warning once they're near the end of that life. On doors built in the late 1980s and 90s, which is most of what's around here, that point has often already arrived, especially if the spring is original to the house.
Yes, though less of it than torsion stock, since most garages in this part of the area were built after torsion springs became standard. If your door still runs on side-mounted extension springs, tell us when you call so we bring the right size out from Kennewick.
If your door currently runs on a single torsion spring, which was standard on houses built here through the late 80s and 90s, upgrading to a matched double-spring setup means the door won't drop unsupported if a spring fails again later. It costs more up front; whether it's worth it depends on how long you plan to stay in the house.
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Kennewick Garage Door Pros repairs and installs garage doors, springs and openers in Kennewick, WA and the surrounding area.
