Ohana Garage Doors
Transcript
Mark Guzman:
The door ideally is going to sit above this break in the track here. This is called the vertical track. Hello you bright and smiley faces, Mark with Ohana Garage Doors. And today we’re going to talk about what goes on in a tune-up when we do a tune-up. First thing we’re going to do is a visual inspection. And basically we’re looking for anything out of the norm or anything that’s going to be broken. We’ll start by checking the top bracket and we’ll check all hinges on the door. What we’re looking for is we’re looking for cracks or breaks in the hinge. If you do find any of those, those want to be replaced before it’s a problem. If you have a broken hinge as the door goes up and down through the turn, it can cause the door to buckle or we like to call it taco. Door coming out of the track is not a good thing.
So we’re going to check all of our hinges all the way across and if we find any cracks or breaks in it, of course we’re going to replace them. Once we do all of those, you’re going to do a quick visual inspection of the tracks, make sure that they’re pretty well lined up. Nothing is deformed inside there, which they usually aren’t, but make sure you’ve got an issue. Then the next thing we’ll check is the cables. These cables are on the side of the door and what we’re looking for in there is we’re looking for any frays or kinks that are in the cable. The cable runs down the entire side of the door, all the way to the bottom. That you want to address before it’s an issue. If you have a frayed cable or a cable that starts to fray and you don’t catch it ahead of time, when that thing snaps, your door’s going to come off the track or it can come out of the track and then you’re going to have a bad day. And that’s part of what a tune-up can discover before it’s an issue.
We’ll do a quick visual of the drums and the bearings up top. Make sure there’s no rust, nothing broken inside of there. And of course we’re going to make sure that your springs are in good shape. We’ll check the weight in just a second. But make sure that the springs are all intact, you don’t have a significant amount of rust or anything going on inside. Once we do the visual inspection of the entire door, now we’re going to check the weight of it. What we’re going to do is disconnect the door and we’re going to lift the door up to the halfway point. I say halfway, it’s about halfway. You lift the door up and make sure that the door’s going to sit by itself. If it sits by itself in the opening, that will tell you that the door is balanced. That’s a good sign.
If you lift it up to this point and the door starts dropping down or it slowly sags, then you’re going to want to have a professional come out and address it. That could be an indication of a bigger problem. Once we feel it in the middle, we can lift the door all the way to the top and let it sit at the top of the opening and see how it sits. And if you notice, this door does sag a little, and let me show you on the side here. The door ideally is going to sit above this break in the track here. This is called the vertical track. The door wants to sit above here. If it sits too low like this, that’s an indication that there’s a problem with the springs up top. That means that the door is a little heavier than it should be. If the issue with this door is not addressed, and that could either be adding tension or new springs, you’re going to have to have a professional look at it to see, and we can help with that.
If that issue is not addressed and it goes long enough, it will cause a problem with the opener. It will eventually round out or it will ground out the inside of the drive of the opener up inside here. If it grinds this thing out, then you’re going to need a new opener. You won’t notice it until your opener starts working. You call someone out, we’ll come out and have a look at it and say, “Yes, there is a problem with your opener, but there’s also a problem with your door and you have a compounded issue.” So the overall point of the tune-up is make sure that your door is in good balance shape.
We’ll let the door open up real quick. And you should have sensors on each side of your door. They should be about six inches or lower. No higher than six inches is the proper way to do it. And how we check that is you go over here, hit the button, and while the door’s shutting, simply come over here and I can put my foot where the sensor should be. The door should immediately stop, reverse and go back up. If it does not stop and reverse and go back up, absolutely call us right away. There’s an issue with the door. The last thing we do on a tune-up, because it usually smells a little bit, is we will spray the door. We’re going to spray the hinges, all the moving parts on the door, and hopefully allow the door to be a little quieter than it was before we got here.
When we spray it, we’re going to hit all the hinge points, all the parts that move on a door. And we’re just going to put the stuff we like to use is a petroleum based lubricant. That’s my favorite. We’ll put a little bit on each hinge and then we’ll put it along the middle. We go ahead and repeat this process all the way across on all the hinges and we are good to go. If you have oil tempered springs, which are these black ones up here, you do not need to lubricate those. But if you have galvanized, which looks like gray steel, those you will want to lubricate every time. And if you have galvanized, you should probably be giving us a call and let’s get those things replaced anyways. If they aren’t already rusted, they will be soon enough. Because we do live in Houston. Got two more rows to go on here.
See, the disadvantage of being a camera is you don’t get this awesome smell. Most people do not like the smell, but I really like the smell of this petroleum. And we’re good to go. So once we go ahead and do that, we can let the door up, let it run four or five times, and that will help calm the noise a little bit. It’ll make it a little softer opening and closing. And then over probably the next 12 to 18 months, it’ll slowly start to get noisier and that’s when you know it’s time to call us again. And if you have any questions about how to do that or you encounter any problems with your garage door, absolutely call the professional. My favorite professional is Ohana Garage Doors.
