Repairs and servicing
Can a garage door spring be repaired?
No — a broken or worn garage door spring cannot be repaired in the UK trade; it is always replaced, and always as a matching pair, typically costing £150–£350 inc. VAT plus a £40–£80 call-out fee. A spring under tension that has fractured or stretched has permanently lost its stored energy and cannot be restored.
Why repair is not an option
A garage door spring works by storing mechanical energy in a coiled length of steel. Once a coil fractures, or stretches past its working tolerance, that stored-energy capacity is gone permanently — there is no way to weld, reset or re-tension it back to a safe working state. Any UK engineer will replace rather than attempt to repair a failed spring.
What an engineer actually does on a spring callout
The engineer identifies whether the gear is canopy or retractable, matches the replacement coil size and wire gauge to the existing setup, releases the tension on the old spring safely with winding bars, fits and winds the new pair, then checks the door balances correctly through its full travel before handing back.
Questions people ask
- Is it cheaper to repair than replace a spring?
- There is no repair option to compare against — a failed spring is always replaced. What does vary is whether other parts fail alongside it; a spring snapping under load can sometimes damage a cable or track at the same time, which adds to the bill.
- How long does spring replacement take?
- A straightforward pair replacement on a single garage door typically takes 45–90 minutes once the engineer is on site, though this varies with door type and access.
- Will the door work at all with a broken spring?
- A manual door with a broken spring becomes very heavy to lift and is unsafe to force open. An electric door with a broken spring will usually stall, hum, or trip the operator overload rather than lift, because the motor is not designed to lift the full weight of the door unassisted.
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