Garage door safety is serious business!!! The replacement or adjustment of most garage door springs should only be attempted
and completed by experienced professionals for your own safety

   You may have seen an article on the internet regarding how one person changed his own torsion springs & lived to tell about and are considering changing them yourself. Before you make that decision on one person’s opinion you may wish to read an article explaining many professional dealers side of the issue.

   The springs, cables, and bottom fixtures are under extreme loads and can and may cause severe and critical injuries without the proper tools, training, and knowledge to make this type of repair. In addition, the safe and proper operation of your garage door and garage door opener is very dependent on the garage door springs being properly calibrated and balanced for the size and weight of your particular garage door. It is our professional opinion and position that these types of repairs should never be attempted by anyone other than by trained and experienced garage door professional technicians!!! It’s certainly not something that I would recommend as a do it yourself project but it is your choice once you are aware of all the risk.

  Since 1993 all residential garage door openers manufactured for distribution
within the United States have been required
to meet the UL-325 safety standard.

   In addition it is also unlawful to service existing openers in some areas unless you bring the garage door opener into compliance with the UL-325 safety standard. Most manufacturers are using photo-cells (infrared safety beam) to comply with some of these provisions and the location of the photo-cell is a condition of the safety standard. The photo-cells are to be located from 3"-5" off of the garage  floor to prevent serious injuries, or even death, to people and especially to children UL is not (affiliated with Doors And Openers.com and does not endorse the web site)and are not to be located above this height to protect vehicles or to protect other objects. Disconnection or the malfunction of the photo-cells will inhibit the closing of the garage door with any device except for maintaining constant pressure on the wall control button. For your friends and family's safety, we highly recommend that your garage door opener be installed and maintained by professionals that are thoroughly trained in the proper installation and servicing of these devices and are familiar with your local requirements.

    Whenever a garage door has an electric garage door opener the manual pull down rope should be completely removed from the garage door and the jamb to prevent the rope from becoming entangled with persons or objects while the door is being opened or closed. In addition, to prevent any damaged to the garage door and/or garage door opener, any outside lock should be disabled in such a manner that the door can not be accidentally ocked while the garage door opener is connected to the garage door.

   There are numerous other garage door and garage door opener safety items that every homeowner and garage door user should heed. Please click on the above link for further product safety tips from Underwriters Laboratories.

Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL) is an
independent, not-for-profit  product safety testing and certification organization. UL has tested products for public safety for over a century. Each year more than 17 billion UL Marks are applied to products worldwide. UL is not affiliated with Doors And Openers.com and does not endorse the web site.