keeping children and pets safe around garage doors

Three Important Garage Door Parts And How To Maintain Them

While it's best to call a garage door contractor upon noticing a serious problem with your garage door, there are a variety of smaller maintenance tasks that you can successfully accomplish on your own. Taking care to maintain your door's critical parts helps to ensure that the door operates properly and safely; failing to keep an eye on these parts can lead to a problem with the door that can result in injury, given the considerable tension of the door's springs. Here are three parts that play a key role in allowing your garage door to operate properly, and how to correctly maintain them.

Hinges

Maintaining the hinges on your garage door is a two-fold job. The first part of this simple task involves checking the tightness of the bolts that hold the hinges in place. Over time, these bolts can loosen and if they loosen to the point of falling out, the door's panels can get damaged. Grab the right size of wrench and check each bolt, tightening it if necessary. The second part of maintaining this integral part is lubricating it; doing so will keep the door moving smoothly and quietly. This task is as simple as applying spray lubricant out of a can. For best results, use the precision straw that comes with the can to aim the spray at the pin of each hinge.

Bottom Weather Stripping

The weather stripping across the bottom of your garage door is designed to form a seal between the door's panels and the floor of your garage. Keeping this part in optimal working condition requires some vigilance whenever you shut the door. Make sure to never shut the door on any object. Anything that's remotely sharp can rip or cut the rubber component of the weather stripping and damage its integrity. Maintain the weather stripping by checking it periodically; when it appears split or otherwise damaged, buy a replacement kit and slide the new rubber component into place.

Bottom Sensor

Powered garage doors rely on a pair of sensors to stop the door when something is in the way. It's important to check these periodically to ensure they're actively working; broken sensors can result in the door shutting on a pet or even one of your children. Test the sensors by waving something in their path while the door is closing; your movement should trigger the door to reverse its course. Performing this job regularly helps you ensure that the door is working safely.

Check out the sites like this one here for more information about garage door parts.


Share