Is your garage door making a noise that doesn’t sound quite right? Garage doors have a lot of different moving parts that work together to allow the doors to open and close smoothly. Quite often though, as it is the case with any motor-powered device, gears, chains, and springs wear down with use. This can cause your garage door to jam, break, or make a noise that sounds expensive! While the average life of a garage door can be as long as 30 years, at Pacific Experts Garage Doors, we measure the life of a garage door in terms of opening and closing cycles. So we took a look at the lifespan of a garage door and came up with a few tips that will help you extend the lifespan of your garage door.
How Long Does a Garage Door Last?
As we mentioned above, the average garage door lifespan can be in the ballpark of 15 years. But, as with anything that has moving parts, garage doors are subject to wear and tear. So the lifespan of a garage door really comes down to how often you use it combined with some other factors like how often you have your garage door serviced and the quality of that maintenance.
The average garage door can work perfectly for about 10,000 cycles. That means each time you open and close it, you count that as a single cycle. If you open and close your garage door twice a day (once leaving and once when you return) every day of the year, then your garage door should last you about 14 years.
But more so than simply counting how many times you click the garage door remote, you need to be aware of how the garage door is maintained. If you hear a noise that does not sound right, like a squeak or a grinding sound, then you need to have your garage door inspected. If not, your garage door may need replacing much sooner than the anticipated 10,000 cycles.
How to Make Extend the Life of a Garage Door
If you want to extend the life of your garage door, then you need to make sure that you take care of the entire garage door and all of the tiny moving parts that work together to ensure that it operates without any issues.
Ideally, you want to call a garage door service company to have your garage door inspected and serviced at least once a year to ensure that the amount of wear and tear on the torsion springs, rollers, lift cables, and garage door operator is minimal.
Preventative maintenance is an important part of extending the life of your garage door. After all, replacing a spring or a few cables is significantly less expensive than needing to replace your entire garage door because of compounding issues.