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this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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No Stupid Questions
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Depends on the garage door. Plenty of electric garage doors use a motor rather than a spring. Relatively safe to repair yourself if you know what you're doing. The motor's usually the first thing that breaks and they're relatively cheap to replace.
Manual garage door with a spring? Very dangerous, as you rightly pointed out.
Hold up, that may not be always the case. My garage door has a spring wound under tension to help the motor lift the door and it is a one-car wide garage door. If that has a catastrophic, uncontrolled release and no one gets hurt, consider yourself lucky.
Oh, absolutely. Not saying it's not possible. So check to be sure.
Mine doesn't. Used to work maintenance, plenty of electric doors, rolldown stormshutters and theft prevention shutters I encountered didn't have a spring.
On a manual door it's almost certain to use a spring.
Electric not always the case. Motors are apparently powerful enough.
This isn’t usually true, as a power-outage could trap a vehicle inside without a manual release. This is usually a little rope hanging from the connecting latch on the motor chain or screw-traveler.
If there wasn’t a spring to help lift the door open then the manual release would at best do very little to help you open the door, or at worst send it crashing down uncontrollably if you released it while the door was open.
Trust me, it’s got a spring.
Yeah, there's a spring. Those motors don't have the power to lift it without the spring, at least the one at my dad's place didn't have enough power when that spring went.
Quick google. Here's an example of a small and relatively affordable motor you can buy:
https://hurricaneshutters.com/100nm-roll-shutter-motor
Max carrying capacity is 400lbs/200kg.
Some of the more powerful ones, you can basically hang on to the door as it's opening.
Heavy duty industrial ones? Metro stations where I live automatically open. On more than one occassion a homeless person makes the mistake of tampering with the metal roll down shutters come opening time. They get caught, motor keeps going, drags them into the mechanism and partially crushes them.
I've come across plenty without a manual release. No rope.
And yes, without a manual release you can't easily open it manually while the power's off. You need to overcome gravity and the motor. Forklift or a jack is the easiest way.
Direct drive stops it falling down uncontrollably.
They all use springs. Modern garage doors use torsion springs which are safer. They look like a small rod mounted on the wall directly above the garage door.
Nope. Did maintenance for a while.
Some the roll garage door is connected directly to the motor which pulls/pushes it up a rail with teeth. Direct drive. No spring, even above the door.
Roll down storm shutters and theft prevention shutters often don't have them either.
Obviously, this is anecdotal for my area, and it's best to always check.
It's possible that the sealed motor unit has a small spring in it, but I'd often replace the entire thing.
As far as I'm concerned, not knowing the difference falls under the "not qualified" part of my earlier statement.
You happen to know what you've got, and what you're doing? Go for it. More power to you.
Any shadow of doubt? Put the tools down, get someone who knows what they're doing.