Garage Door Parts & How to Care For Them
Your garage door system consists of at least 30 moving parts. Over time, these parts wear down. However, garage door parts can last longer and work more efficiently with a little extra care. Standard garage door parts include:
- Panels
- Rollers
- Pulleys
- Openers
- Brackets
- Locks and Handles
- Cables and Drums
- Torsion or Extension Springs
- And Much, Much More!
In this article, our Garage Doors and More team will share some inside information about several garage door parts. Knowing the purpose of common garage door parts and being aware of the signs that they need maintenance or repair will help your door system run smoothly and keep you and your family safe and secure.
5 Common Garage Door Parts
Garage Door Hinges
Hinges are one of the smallest garage door parts. Although often overlooked, your garage door wouldn’t function without them. When you open or close your paneled garage door, you use as many as 15 hinges, possibly more!
Garage door hinges connect the garage door panels and help your garage door to pivot and roll up and over the turn in the tracks on either side of the door.
They’re located inside the garage door, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune to outdoor elements. Proper lubrication is needed to ensure rust doesn’t make its way inside the hinge, where a metal pin rotates inside the clasps on either side.
Enough rust will cause a hinge to stop rotating. Your garage door opener will have to work much harder to open your garage door, causing undue stress and premature wear and tear. The solution? Proper lubrication! Schedule garage door maintenance to keep your hinges in tip-top shape.
Garage Door Sensors
Photo sensors are a safety feature provided with your garage door opener. These sensors use an infrared beam to detect obstructions in the garage door’s path. If the beam between the garage door sensors is broken, the garage door will stop moving. This feature prevents the door from closing on small children, pets, and vehicles.
By law, photo sensors must be placed 3-6 inches from the ground. This keeps your loved ones safe, but also makes it easy for the sensors to become misaligned if someone or something bumps into them.
Misaligned sensors will keep your garage door opener from working correctly. Garage Doors and More offers garage door opener repair, which includes aligning and maintaining safety sensors. To help you avoid issues with your garage door sensors, we recommend the following tips:
- Store tools and lawn equipment away from the garage entrance
- Keep bags of salt during the winter away from the corners of your garage
- Clean leaves, cobwebs, and dirt that collect near the sensors
Garage Door Tracks
On each side of your garage door are tracks that guide the garage door while it opens and closes and keeps it from falling. Garage doors run on steel wheels, known as rollers, that fit inside the channel-shaped tracks.
These rollers have bearings that allow them to spin as the garage door moves, allowing for easy and smooth door function. If the bearings come loose, which is common with time, the roller will become excessively wobbly or might lock up altogether.
The #1 way to keep your garage door tracks healthy is to keep them clean. Grass clippings, leaves, dirt, sand, and gravel can limit the capacity of the rollers and tracks to open your garage door smoothly and efficiently.
Garage Door Weather Stripping
Garage doors are designed with a weather strip along the sides and bottom of the door so that it can close tightly. Weather stripping helps keep debris and other elements out of your garage while also helping to regulate the temperature inside your garage.
In some cases, the weather strip is simply a flat strip of rubber with a lip on the outside. It’s about a quarter-inch thick and runs the length of the door. The lip is tipped downward so that when the garage door closes, it is sure to push against the concrete and create a seal.
Other, more effective weather strips use different mounting methods. They employ a tube of rubber at the bottom of the door. The tube is about an inch or so deep. Running from side to side at the bottom of the garage door, when the garage door comes down, the tube is pushed onto the concrete, creating an effective seal.
Look for the following signs that you need to replace your garage door weather stripping:
- Visible cracks, tears, or missing sections
- Drafts and air leaks around the garage door
- Increased utility bills and declined energy efficiency
- Water leaks following rain or snow
- Insects or pests inside the garage
- Brittle or hardened weather stripping
Garage Door Keypads
Although not the latest garage door technology, keypads still offer convenient access to your Round Lake Park, IL home. You simply enter a code, and voila. Your garage door opens and closes on command.
Newer garage door openers offer rolling code technology to keep hackers from gaining unauthorized access to your garage and home. However, what do you do if you enter your code into the keypad and your door doesn’t budge?
Follow these tips to get your garage door keypad to work:
- Replace the battery in the keypad
- Clean the keypad by blowing compressed air inside
- Reboot your garage door opener
- Reset your keypad’s PIN number
Contact your local garage door experts for help!
Need Help With Your Broken Garage Door Parts?
Educating yourself about common garage door parts will help you care for your garage door. Knowing about common garage door parts and maintaining or repairing them are two different things, though. If you need help repairing or restoring these or other common garage door parts, our Garage Doors and More team is here to help!
Schedule garage door service near Round Lake Park, IL, and our nearby service areas today!
