They all use springs. Modern garage doors use torsion springs which are safer. They look like a small rod mounted on the wall directly above the garage door.
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Hyperreality@kbin.social 1 year agoDepends on the garage door. Plenty of electric garage doors use a motor rather than a spring. Relatively safe to repair yourself if you know what you're doing. The motor's usually the first thing that breaks and they're relatively cheap to replace.
Manual garage door with a spring? Very dangerous, as you rightly pointed out.
jiberish@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hyperreality@kbin.social 1 year ago
Nope. Did maintenance for a while. Rarely encountered them on the electric ones. Mine doesn't have one either. Roll down storm shutters and theft prevention shutters rarely had them either.
Obviously, this is anecdotal, and it's best to always check.
DannyMac@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hold up, that may not be always the case. My garage door has a spring wound under tension to help the motor lift the door and it is a one-car wide garage door. If that has a catastrophic, uncontrolled release and no one gets hurt, consider yourself lucky.
Hyperreality@kbin.social 1 year ago
Oh, absolutely. Not saying it's not possible. So check to be sure.
Mine doesn't. Used to work maintenance, most electric doors, rolldown stormshutters and theft prevention shutters I encountered didn't have a spring.
On a manual door it's almost certain to use a spring.
Electric not always the case, IME not that often. Motors are apparently powerful enough.