OC Garage Door Maintenance and Repair Service Since 1972

Call Entry Systems Automated Gate and Garage Door Service today for reliable, fast same-day service and high-quality professional warrantied garage door maintenance, repair, and service from a local Orange County-based company. All maintenance includes high-quality garage door lubricant or grease and a thorough tune-up.

Request Service or Maintenance Now (949) 495-0835

Repairing a garage door often comes at the worst time. A broken garage door can be noisy, annoying, and sometimes not functioning entirely!

Luckily, Entry Systems has a team of professional service technicians who provide professional and timely garage repair services.

Our services include garage door maintenance, new garage door installations, garage door section replacement, broken spring replacement, sensor adjustments, cable installations, and more!

Image of assortment of hand tools used for garage door repair, mostly wrenches.

Why we advocate preventative maintenance

Equipment maintenance is often something you know you must do yet still neglect.

Entry Systems focuses on preventative maintenance because we want to prevent bad things from happening.

And if they do, that would be a minimal expense for the repair.

But repairs still occur when you do preventative garage door maintenance. Still, the idea is that you plan to pay a little ahead of time.

Then, if it breaks unexpectedly, it will be something minor, and your equipment will be back up and running fairly quickly.

Your garage door is the largest moving item on your home, and it is very heavy, making up often a third or more of the face of your home.

Many of us use it as our front door. So, if you cannot get in or out, that becomes inconvenient.

In addition, most people park their cars or put their recreational vehicles, bicycles, and sometimes trash cans in their garages.

Therefore, your garage door is a vital access point and necessary for convenience. Yet many homeowners neglect its importance.

So, when your garage door breaks and you are trapped and cannot get it to open, it can become a significant issue and must be resolved as quickly as possible.

Preventative garage door maintenance can help avoid an unnecessary expense and long-drawn-out periods of having your garage door stuck open or shut.

A neighbor can be helpful when you need to lift a heavy garage door. Still, some of our customers do not have anyone to call.

When customers are desperate for 24/7 garage door service, sometimes unscrupulous garage door companies will take advantage of the situation and price-gouge them.

Instead of dealing with such an after-hours headache, we recommend scheduling preventative maintenance when convenient for you, even if you don't feel like you need it.

Knowing that your garage door is working well gives you peace of mind that you stayed on top of it and avoided future unnecessary headaches.

Please don't put up with an overhead garage door with sporadic operating issues; it does not have to be that way.

When Entry Systems comes out to your home, it may appear that your garage door is working correctly. Still, there may be signs that it is on its last leg or that equipment is starting to fail or wear down.

Therefore, every one of our garage door technicians goes through

  •  a maintenance inspection
  •  a visual inspection to see if the motor is struggling or dragging
  • and a tactile review where we feel the door and the equipment to see if it is not smooth or if it is struggling to move.

Lastly, we do an aural inspection and listen to how the garage door equipment sounds. These sounds are often what many of our customers call us.

For example, they hear that their door has become very noisy, with pops, cracks, and clicks.

We also hear from customers when they can tell the garage door opener is not running smoothly or sluggish. In this case, we often disconnect and run the equipment by hand.

We often show our first-time customers a DIY inspection process, which manufacturers strongly recommend for their garage door and garage door opener.

The goal is to catch minor issues before they become more significant expensive problems.

When a door replacement is unforeseen, it can take weeks or months to have a custom garage door made, shipped, or approved by your homeowner's association. Then you can be stuck with a broken door for a while.

Garage Door Opener Maintenance

Garage door openers are maintenance free except for screw drive openers, however adjustments and safety testing is recommended by the manufacturer once a year to ensure proper performance.

How to Lubricate a Garage Door

When lubricating a sectional garage door, lubricate everything that hinges and turns with silicon-based spray grease. Apply this to any metal-on-metal contacting pieces or parts, such as rollers that rub against hinges, any metal bearings you see, and any pivot points or hinges you see. Most garage door openers no longer require grease unless you have a screw-drive opener. With a screw drive opener, you want to apply a thin bead of white lithium grease, which comes in a tube. You run it all along the screw of a screw drive opener, using as little as possible and wiping off any excess.

You can buy this grease from a professional (from us in our office!) or a hardware store. Avoid WD-40 unless it is a silicon-based version because it will leave the door much noisier than before. The grease should spray on thin and then thicken once applied.

This is a picture of a garage door technician pointing to a garage door opener inside a homeowner's home.

How often do garage doors need maintenance?

Garage door and garage door opener manufacturers often recommend that homeowners do maintenance on their equipment monthly, quarterly, and annually.

Unfortunately, most people do not have a garage door professional look at it until it breaks. Our goal is that our customers are never trapped, and their garage door is never stuck open.

We want to do anything we can to prevent those situations.

For example, suppose we notice the space outside the garage door is getting cluttered with different objects. In that case, we advise homeowners on what spacing is needed.

If you are an engineer, handyman, or enjoy tinkering on your own, you can use a safety checklist such as this one from DASMA (the Door and Access Systems Manufacturers Association).

We have customers of all different mechanical aptitudes. It comes down to your comfortability with the equipment and your understanding of it.

If this sounds like you, training with us can be helpful when you move into a new home. We can educate you on what you can look for a do.

Standard tests include:

  • The auto-reverse feature.
  • Testing the door balance.
  • Checking.
  • Adjusting and tightening up hardware.

We do not recommend taking anything apart or loosening anything.

Regarding rollers, eight of them you can replace with no problem, but we do not recommend replacing the top or bottom rollers, or you may get hurt.

Garage Door Safety

We accept the responsibility to advise our customers if there is a possibility that something could fall, or someone could become seriously injured with the equipment as it is.

For example, garage doors are relatively safe to work on and have in your home, but if they are not maintained, they become unsafe.

Regular maintenance and an awareness of how your equipment works can avoid safety issues and the inconvenience of a stuck garage door.

Suppose your garage door opener does not have safety sensors. In that case, it is over thirty years old and should be replaced immediately. The safety beam should stop when you are in the way.

Monthly:

  • Do a quick safety check.
  • Periodically run the garage door opener a few times. Then, look and listen to your garage door and know what it sounds like you would your car so that you know when something sounds wrong.
  • Be aware. If something looks weird, take a picture and text it to us at (949) 495-0835, and we will respond and let you know if it is normal. Also, if you want to replace a part yourself, give us a call or text us. We will confirm whether or not that is a good idea for that situation to avoid unnecessary replacements.

Six months to a Year:

Perform oiling, adjusting, maintaining, and a visual inspection.

We can advise you what to look for, but you also may prefer to have an Entry Systems garage door professional come out and do it for you.

For example, we notice if a small hinge begins to break and must be replaced, or a cable has begun to fray.

However, suppose you neglect these visual clues. In that case, broken hinges can cause stress to the garage door sections, causing pieces to crack.

At that point, if you call us out, we can place a strut on the section, and if we catch it on time, the crack may be visible on the inside but not on the outside to avoid section replacement.

However, if this goes on too long, the crack will reach the front of the door, and it will not just be one section, but it has reached two, three, or all of the sections of your garage door.

By that point, your garage door will cave in, and it will get stuck, and at that point, we might have to recommend a complete and total replacement of the garage door system.

This situation is preventable when you keep on top of replacing a cracked hinge. Hinges and struts are less expensive than replacing a section or the entire door.

This is an image of a variety of handtools used for maintenance and repair of garage doors and gates.

Always check the garage door balance.

The first thing we usually do is check the garage door's balance, which means it needs to stay roughly 25% open by hand and halfway and fully open when the motor is disconnected.

There may be exceptions if the garage door is very large or tall.

When we pick up a garage door that is extremely heavy right away, we know that something is wrong immediately, that something needs to be adjusted, something is getting ready to break, or that it is binding.

Suppose we notice that a garage door crashes to the ground when it is disconnected. In that case, we know that it is a safety issue and that we need to make some serious recommendations.

Disconnect the garage door opener from the door by using the emergency release (usually a red cord) and put it in manual operation.

Make sure you know how to reengage it. If you need instructions on how to do this, let us know.

Next, lift the door by hand using the handle inside; be careful not to pinch your fingers between sections or touch anything sharp. The door may be heavy.

This test is so important that California now requires that all garage door openers sold or that we connect to preexisting systems have a battery backup system.

The manufacturers have tried to make this as dummy-proof as possible. The battery backup system will work as long as the motor is still working.

The only time you are genuinely trapped is when your garage door spring breaks, it is a dead weight, and nothing is left to counterbalance it.

Sometimes, it can take multiple people to lift a door when a spring breaks!

Garage Door Maintenance FAQ