A garage door is the heaviest moving object in your house and the one nobody maintains. An hour a year, ideally in autumn, prevents most of the failures on the rest of this site.
Most garage door failures in the Treasure Valley happen in the first sustained cold of the season, and most of them were detectable in October. A spring at the end of its cycle life, a roller with a seized bearing, a hardened bottom seal, a cable rusting at its bracket — all visible, all cheap to address before they become a 6 a.m. emergency in January with the car trapped inside.
Most homeowners who lubricate a door use whatever spray is in the garage, and the common ones are wrong for this climate. Light household oils thicken as the temperature drops, so a door that was quiet in September gets loud and sluggish in December and the opener works harder than it should. A lithium or silicone-based garage door lubricant stays workable in the cold. Also, never grease the track: the rollers are supposed to roll along it, and lubricant there collects grit and makes them skid instead.
A tune-up is not a magic warranty, and we will not pretend it prevents everything. What it reliably does is convert emergencies into scheduled work. Finding a spring at 9,500 cycles in October means replacing it on a Tuesday afternoon at standard rates rather than at 6 a.m. in January at after-hours rates with a car trapped behind it. On the valley's aging 1990s and 2000s doors, that difference comes up often.
Once a year for a door in daily use, and autumn is the best timing in the Treasure Valley so problems surface before the first hard freeze. Twice a year if the door is your main entrance or the garage is unusually dusty.
Some of it, safely: wiping and aligning the photo-eyes, checking for frayed cable, testing the safety reversal, and lubricating hinges and rollers with proper garage door lubricant. Never adjust or work on torsion springs — the stored energy in them is genuinely dangerous.
A lithium or silicone-based garage door lubricant, which stays workable in the cold. Avoid thin household oils that thicken when it is freezing, and never lubricate the track itself — rollers need to roll, not slide.
Often it is the best money on an old door, because it tells you honestly how much life is left and lets you plan a replacement instead of being forced into one on the coldest morning of the year.
Related: Spring Repair · Cable Repair · Opener Repair
