Questions we get asked every day

Almost always a broken torsion spring. That bang is the spring letting go, and it is loud enough that people think something hit the door.

The spring — not the opener — carries the weight of the door. Once it snaps, the opener is trying to lift a couple of hundred pounds on its own and it can’t. Don’t keep pressing the button, and don’t try to force the door up by hand. We keep springs on the truck, so most of these are fixed in one visit.

No. Estimates are free and there’s no charge for coming out.

We’ll tell you what’s wrong and what it costs before any work starts, and you decide from there. No fee for the trip, no fee for the diagnosis.

Please don’t. A torsion spring holds an enormous amount of stored energy, and it is released through winding bars in a specific order. Get that wrong and the bar becomes a projectile, or the door drops.

This is the one job on a garage door where the gap between “handy” and “qualified” sends people to the emergency room. Sensors and remotes, have at it. Springs, call someone.

Usually not. Off-track doors are normally a bent track, a worn roller, or a cable that slipped off the drum — and the panels themselves are generally fine.

What turns a repair into a replacement is forcing it. Every press of the button drags the door further out of line and starts bending panels that were fine a minute ago. Stop, and call while it’s still just the hardware.

That’s the safety sensors — the two small eyes a few inches off the floor at either side of the opening. They have to see each other or the opener refuses to close the door. A blinking light is it telling you so.

Try this first, it’s free: move anything sitting in front of them, wipe both lenses with a dry cloth, and check that both little lights are steady rather than flickering. A bag or a bike wheel in the way fixes it about half the time.

If one lens stays dark or flickers, the bracket has usually been knocked out of alignment, or a staple has pinched the wire. That part we’ll sort out.

Both. We repair and replace openers — Chamberlain, LiftMaster, Genie and the rest — along with remotes, keypads, sensors and worn-out drive units.

Worth knowing before you buy a new one: a lot of “the opener is dead” calls turn out to be a sensor alignment or a failed capacitor, not the unit. We’ll tell you which one it is.

Most of the time, same day. The trucks carry the common parts — springs, rollers, cables, drums, sensors — so the usual failures get fixed on the first visit rather than after a parts order.

If your car is shut in, or the door is stuck open and you can’t leave the house like that, say so when you call and we’ll move you up the list.

Yes — around the clock, including weekends and holidays.

Garage doors fail at inconvenient times, and a door stuck open is a house left open. If that happens at 2am, call then rather than waiting until morning.

It depends on which part failed and what size door you have, so anyone quoting you a firm number down the phone before seeing it is guessing.

What we can promise is the process: we look at it for free, tell you the price before we start, and you decide. No charge for the visit if you’d rather not go ahead.

We’re based in Katy and cover Katy, Cypress, Fulshear, Richmond, Sugar Land and the surrounding west Houston area.

Not sure whether you’re in range? Call and we’ll tell you straight rather than sending someone an hour late.