How We Fix It
Bon Air is a small pocket of the Midlothian service area, just under 7,000 households (F6 regional context aside, Bon Air itself runs around 6,929 households). A town that size doesn't generate the volume of a big subdivision grid, but it does mean the spring calls that come in tend to cluster by age of door rather than by neighborhood sprawl. We come from Midlothian, about five miles up the road, with the torsion spring sizes that match doors built in the mid-1970s - the era most Bon Air garages date to. On site, we check the door's weight and track style before touching anything, because a spring sized for the wrong door wears out again in under a year. Most jobs are a torsion spring swap on a double-car door, cable and drum check included, since cables stretch and fray right alongside the spring that's doing the lifting. We bring stock sizes for that 1970s torsion window on the truck. If the door's original hardware was replaced somewhere along the way with something newer or oddball, that can mean a second trip once we've confirmed the exact spring - we'd rather tell you that up front than guess and get it wrong.
Where This Job Goes Sideways
A broken spring job goes sideways when the door is older than the spring. Bon Air's housing stock centers on 1975, but the wider Midlothian area spans construction from 1954 up through 2005, so a spring call on an older end-of-range door sometimes turns up a worn end bearing plate or a track that's bent from someone trying to force the door with a dead spring. Forcing a door on a broken spring is the single most common way a simple spring job turns into a panel or track replacement - the opener motor isn't built to lift a door's full weight, and it will try anyway until something bends. Another way it goes sideways: single-spring setups on older doors. If your door only has one torsion spring and it's original to a mid-70s build, we replace it as a pair when we can, because the second spring is usually close behind and a mismatched pair fails again within months. We'll tell you which situation you're in before we start, not after we've already pulled the old spring.
Getting It Booked In
If your door won't lift, or it lifts a few inches and stops, that's a spring, not an opener problem nine times out of ten. Don't keep hitting the remote - that burns out the motor trying to do a spring's job. Call us, tell us roughly when the house was built if you know it, and we'll bring spring sizes that match Bon Air's typical 1970s stock. We travel out from Midlothian, about five miles, so same-day isn't a promise but it's usually not a long wait either. See our Bon Air area page for the rest of what we cover nearby, or check the Midlothian spring repair page if you're outside Bon Air itself.
