Why your garage door sounds like that

Almost every emergency call we take started as a noise somebody had been living with for a month. A door that has begun to bind will usually keep working for a while, and then stop on the coldest morning of the year with a car behind it. The useful thing about garage doors is that they are fairly honest. Different faults make different sounds, and once you know which is which you can usually tell whether you are looking at a ten minute adjustment or something that needs a technician the same day.

A rhythmic squeal or chirp that speeds up with the door

This is nearly always rollers. A roller runs in the track on a small bearing, and when that bearing dries out or starts to break up it squeals once per revolution. Because the door speeds up slightly in the middle of its travel, the chirp speeds up with it, which is the giveaway.

Dry rollers are the cheapest problem on this list and the one most likely to be sorted at a routine service. Left alone, a seizing roller stops rolling and starts dragging, which wears a flat on it and starts working the track out of alignment. That is how a cheap part turns into a bent track.

A bang like a gunshot, then the door is too heavy to lift

That is a torsion spring. The spring sits on a bar above the opening and stores the energy that makes a door weighing well over a hundred pounds feel liftable. When it fails it releases that energy all at once, and the noise is loud enough that people often think something hit the house.

After a spring goes, the door becomes its full dead weight. Do not try to lift it by hand, and do not keep running the opener. The opener was sized to move a balanced door, and asking it to lift an unbalanced one will burn the motor out or shear the trolley on top of the repair you already have. Springs are under high tension whether the door is open or closed, and they are genuinely not a homeowner job.

Grinding from the motor unit with little or no movement

If the motor runs but the door barely moves, the usual culprit on a chain or belt drive is a stripped drive gear inside the opener head. It is a common wear item and a repair rather than a replacement on most units.

The important question is why it stripped. A drive gear that has chewed itself up after a few years has often been fighting a door that was out of balance the whole time. Replacing the gear without checking the springs just sets a timer on the next one.

A rattle or clatter across the whole travel

Loose hardware. Garage doors cycle thousands of times and the vibration gradually works fixings loose, particularly the hinge and bracket bolts between sections. A general rattle that gets worse over months is usually a lot of small things rather than one big one.

This is worth catching, because loose hinges let sections move independently, and sections that move independently crack at the stiles. Tightening a door up is part of an annual service.

Scraping or a bang at one point in the travel

A noise that happens at the same place every time points at something physical in the track: a dent, a bent section of rail, or a roller that has started to leave the track at a particular point. A door that is visibly crabbing, so one side leads the other, is the same family of problem and needs looking at quickly.

A door that comes off its track entirely is both a repair and a hazard, because the weight is then unsupported. Stop using it and call somebody.

What to do before you ring anyone

• Note when the noise happens: opening, closing, one spot, or the whole travel.
• Look at the springs above the opening. A visible gap in the coil means a broken spring.
• Pull the manual release and try the door by hand. A balanced door should stay put when you stop it halfway.
• If it slams down or flies up when released, the balance is gone. Leave it closed and call.
• Do not spray general purpose lubricant on the tracks. Tracks are meant to be clean and dry.

The honest version

Some of this is maintenance you can stay on top of, and some of it is not. Rollers, hinges and fixings are ordinary wear. Springs and cables are stored energy and belong to somebody with the tools and the training to deal with them safely.

If you are not sure which one you have, describe the noise to us on the phone. We would rather talk you out of a call out you do not need than turn up and charge you for tightening four bolts.