Broken garage door spring: how to tell, why it happened, what it actually costs to fix.

How to tell if it's the spring (and not something else)

Three signals identify a broken spring with near certainty:

1. The bang

Torsion springs store enough energy to slam a door shut from 8 feet up. When they snap, it sounds like a gunshot or a heavy book dropped on tile. Homeowners often think someone broke in. If your garage made that noise and the door now won't open, that's almost always the spring.

2. The visible gap

Walk into the garage and look at the springs mounted horizontally above the door. A healthy torsion spring looks like one continuous tight coil. A broken spring has a clear gap of 1–3 inches where the coil snapped and the two halves recoiled. You'll often see one end of the spring rotated 90 degrees off-axis. Extension springs (the ones running parallel to the tracks) are easier to spot — the spring will be visibly stretched out, hanging loose, or with the safety cable dangling.

3. The motor stalls

When you push the remote, the opener will grunt, the motor will run for a second or two, the door will lift a few inches, then everything stops. Some openers will lift the door 6–12 inches and let it fall back. The opener isn't broken — it's working exactly as designed, refusing to drag 200 lbs of dead weight up a track without spring assist.

When it's not the spring

If the door opens normally but won't close, the spring isn't the issue — that's usually a photo-eye sensor. If the door comes off the track or rolls crookedly, look at the rollers, not the spring. If the door lifts but the bottom panel stays on the ground, that's a broken bottom-fixture or cable, not the spring.

---

Why springs break — and why they break sooner in Florida

Springs aren't rated in years; they're rated in cycles. A "cycle" is one open + one close. Standard residential springs ship rated for 10,000 cycles. A typical family that opens the garage 4 times a day burns 1,460 cycles a year — so a stock spring should last about 7 years.

Real-world conditions shorten that. Three Florida-specific factors:

• Salt air corrosion — Homes east of Federal Highway, on the barrier island, or anywhere within a mile of the Atlantic see metal corrosion 30–40% faster than inland. Salt eats the spring's powder coating, then pits the steel, then concentrates stress at the pits until the spring snaps mid-cycle.
• Door weight creep — If you've added insulation panels, replaced single-pane glass with double-pane impact glass, or installed a hurricane-rated panel without re-sizing the spring, the spring is now working harder than it was rated for. We see this constantly on post-2005 retrofits.
• Cold snaps — South Florida sees 5–10 nights below 50°F each winter. Cold makes spring steel slightly more brittle, and the first sharp temperature swing of the season is when borderline springs fail. We typically see a 3× spike in spring calls in January.

---

Torsion springs vs. extension springs

Most doors built or replaced since 2000 use torsion springs — the thick, tightly-wound springs mounted on a shaft horizontally above the closed door. They counterbalance the door's weight by torsion (twist). They're safer than extension springs because the energy is contained in the spring body, not stored in a stretched coil that could whip.

Extension springs are the long thin springs that run parallel to the horizontal tracks. They were standard on doors built in the 1980s and 1990s and still show up on older PBC homes. They work by stretching when the door closes. They're cheaper but they fail more violently — a snapped extension spring can become a projectile, which is why building code requires safety cables threaded through them.

If you have an older home with extension springs and you're replacing them, this is a good time to convert to torsion. It costs $150–$250 more on the labor side but eliminates the projectile risk and roughly doubles the service life.

---

DIY: why we tell every caller "don't"

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's injury reports consistently list garage door springs among the top causes of emergency-room visits for home-improvement injuries. The failure mode is brutal: winding bars store enough energy that if you slip during winding, the bar is launched out of the spring cone at high velocity, usually into the operator's chest, face, or hand.

The Internet is full of "how to" videos. None of them adequately convey that:

• The bars must be the correct size and shape — never substitute rebar or screwdrivers.
• The spring has to be the correct inside diameter and wire gauge for your door's weight; an undersized spring won't lift the door, an oversized one will rip the lift cables.
• If you have a two-spring system, both must be replaced as a matched pair, even if only one snapped.
• The door must be re-balanced after install — a poorly balanced door burns out the opener motor in 6–12 months.

If you're determined to DIY anyway, do it on a single-spring residential door, use proper winding bars from a garage door supply house, never trust a YouTube measurement guide, and have someone else in the garage with you. We'd still rather you call us, but at least don't go in alone.

---

What it costs in Palm Beach County

Current 2026 pricing for spring replacement in PBC, all-in (parts + labor + balance + 1-year warranty):

Pricing reflects 2026 Palm Beach County market rates. National-average guides on Home Advisor and Angi typically quote $150–$350 for spring jobs — that's a national mean that excludes Florida's higher labor costs and the dual-spring/galvanized reality of most PBC doors. Watch for $99 "spring repair" Google Ads — those nearly always rebrand once on-site to $400+. Full spring pricing breakdown →

---

What to ask before hiring

1. Are you licensed in Florida? Real installers will give you a CGC or CRC number you can verify at myfloridalicense.com. Unlicensed work voids most homeowner insurance claims if something goes wrong.
2. Do you stock the spring on your truck? A real spring repair shop carries the 6–10 most common spring sizes on every truck. If they tell you they need to "order the part," they're usually a referral agency dispatching subcontractors.
3. Will you replace both springs or just the broken one? The right answer is both, if you have two. Anyone who says "we can save you money by just doing the one" is setting you up for a return visit and double labor.
4. What's the warranty? One year parts + labor is standard. Anything shorter is a yellow flag.
5. Will you balance the door after install? A spring replacement isn't done until the tech disconnects the opener, lifts the door manually to the halfway point, and lets go — the door should hold position without drifting up or down. If it doesn't, the spring tension is wrong and the opener will eat the difference until it dies.