01 Repair & installation
Something has failed and the door will not behave. We work out what actually broke — and, more usefully, what made it break — before anyone quotes you a part.
02 What has actually gone wrong
Almost nobody calls us knowing what has broken. They call because the door is doing something it did not do last week — and that is genuinely enough to start with.
Here is the thing worth understanding before you spend money. Your garage door weighs somewhere between 130 and 400 pounds depending on whether it is a single steel door on an old detached garage or an insulated double on a modern attached one. The opener does not lift that weight. The springs do. The opener is a positioning motor that guides an already-balanced door up and down a track.
Which means that when the balance goes, everything downstream complains. A spring at the end of its cycle life loses tension gradually, so the opener starts working harder, so the gear in the opener head wears faster, so the door travels slower, so someone turns the force settings up, so the safety system stops protecting anyone. Six months later the spring snaps and the customer is convinced the opener failed.
That is why we diagnose the whole assembly on every repair call. Fixing the part that broke without finding out why it broke is how you end up paying twice.
What is it doing, exactly? Not moving at all is a different problem from moving a foot and stopping, which is different again from closing and then reversing back up.
Is there a noise, and where in the travel? A grind on the way up, a bang at the top, a squeal throughout, or a single pop followed by silence — each points somewhere different.
Can you see the spring? Look at the steel shaft running horizontally above the door opening, or at the springs running along the horizontal tracks on an older single-car garage. A clean gap in the coil means the spring is broken, and that answers most of it.
03 The usual suspects
Roughly in order of frequency, and weighted toward the things this housing stock and this climate produce.
The winter classic. Springs are rated in cycles, not years — a 10,000-cycle spring on a door used four times a day is doing well to last seven years. Cold snaps finish off the ones already near the end. Spring repair.
Read moreCables fray quietly for months, usually because a drum is worn or the door has been running out of level. When one lets go, that corner of the door drops and the whole thing racks. Cable repair.
Read moreSteel rollers with dry or collapsed bearings. They are the reason a door sounds like a freight train, and left long enough they chew the track. Nylon replacements are the best-value job on a door. Roller repair.
Read moreSometimes a bumper. Often, in an alley garage, a slab that has settled far enough that the track is no longer plumb. Stop using the opener the moment this happens. Off-track doors.
Read moreStripped drive gear, worn trolley, failed logic board, or misaligned safety sensors sending the door back up. Most are repairable and cost far less than a new unit. Opener repair.
Read moreReversing into it does some of this. Standing water in an unpaved alley does the rest, especially on wood and on steel doors with a rusted bottom bracket. Panel replacement.
Read more04 Symptom triage
This is the table we work from mentally when you ring. It is not a substitute for looking at the door, but it will tell you roughly what kind of conversation you are about to have.
| What you are seeing | Most likely cause | What it usually needs |
|---|---|---|
| Opener runs, door does not move at all | Broken spring, or a stripped drive gear in the opener head | Spring replacement in pairs, or an opener gear kit |
| Door lifts a few inches then stops | Broken spring, or the safety reverse detecting binding | Spring diagnosis plus a balance test |
| Door closes then immediately reverses | Misaligned or obstructed photo-eye sensors, or a close-force setting fighting a mechanical bind | Sensor alignment and a proper force check, not a force increase |
| Door hangs crooked or one side is higher | A lift cable has snapped or jumped its drum | Cable and drum replacement, then re-levelling |
| Loud grinding or rumbling throughout travel | Worn steel roller bearings, dry hinges | Nylon roller set and hinge service |
| A single sharp bang, then the door will not lift | Torsion spring failure | Matched-pair spring replacement |
| Door is stuck to the floor in winter | Bottom seal frozen to the slab after a freeze–thaw | Free it manually, then replace a hardened or split bottom seal |
| Door leaning, roller visibly out of the track | Off-track door — often a settled slab or an impact | Stop using it and call; re-tracking plus root-cause correction |
| Remote works, wall button does not (or vice versa) | Wall control wiring, or a failing logic board | Wall control or board replacement |
| Door moves in jerks and hesitates | Bent or spread track, or a bind in the vertical section | Track alignment and re-plumbing |
If your symptom is not here, call (224) 505-2236 and describe it. Twenty years of hearing these means we can usually narrow it to two possibilities before we get in the van.
05 The Evanston factor
Three things about this market change the repair picture, and none of them apply in a 2005 subdivision.
The alleys. The City grades more than 300 unpaved alleys each spring specifically to deal with the ruts and standing water that build up. If your garage opens onto one, the approach is not level, the slab has probably moved, and the bottom of your door has been sitting in water. That shows up as mis-tracking rollers, rusted bottom brackets and rotted bottom rails. You can read about the paving programme if you want to know what the fix looks like at the street level.
The age. Forty percent of Evanston housing predates 1940. That means eight- and nine-foot openings rather than modern sixteen-foot doubles, limited headroom under old rafters, and header framing that has been carrying a door since Coolidge was president. Standard parts kits do not always fit, and low-headroom track conversions are routine here rather than exotic.
The salt. Not sea salt — Lake Michigan is fresh water and anyone telling you about coastal corrosion here is reading from a template. Road salt is the real problem. In one recent winter the City spread 3,377 tons of granular salt and 52,616 gallons of brine over 190 miles of road, and every bit of it comes home on tyres into an unheated garage.
06 Included on every repair visit
The point is not to find more to sell you. The point is that a door is a system, and telling you a cable is fraying while we are already standing there is cheaper for you than telling you in four months when it snaps.
We follow the published DASMA garage door system safety guidance on force settings and reversal testing rather than adjusting the symptom away.
07 The visit
Door up, door down, opener disconnected, balance tested by hand. Five minutes of looking prevents most wrong diagnoses.
Not just "your spring is broken" but why it broke now — cycle count, wrong original sizing, or a door running out of level for years.
The minimum fix, the recommended fix, and what each buys you in service life. If the minimum is genuinely fine, we will say so.
Balance re-checked, force and limits set, both sensors tested. You watch the door cycle before we leave.
08 Repair or replace
We would rather have this conversation than sell you a repair you will regret. Broadly:
The honest version is that a lot of doors sit in the middle, and the right answer depends on how long you plan to be in the house. We will give you both numbers and let you decide. If it comes to it, here is what replacement involves.
Some old doors are worth more than their hardware. An original wood carriage door on a coach house in Southeast Evanston or a 1920s panelled door on a Northeast Evanston garage can usually be rehabilitated — rebuilt bottom rail, new hardware, proper hinges — for less than a modern replacement and without losing the building's character. If your property sits inside a landmark district, that may also be the path of least resistance with the Preservation Commission.
06 Questions we get asked
The questions we field most often on repair calls, answered properly rather than in one line.
One call reaches the people who will actually be doing the work. Tell us what the door is doing and we will tell you straight what it needs — and when we can get a truck to you.
