How often should you lubricate your garage door?

Why bother

A snapped spring is a heavy, dangerous fix. Standard upkeep. Dull and cheap, and a lot less dull than whatever it's quietly preventing.

What the job involves

1. Wipe the tracks clean with a damp rag and stop there. The tracks just guide the rollers, so grease on them only collects grit and makes things worse.
2. Give a silicone spray or white lithium grease to the hinge pivots and the roller stems and bearings as you raise the door. Skip the nylon part of nylon rollers, it doesn't want it.
3. Hit the springs and the bearing plates above the door, plus the opener's top rail and arm bar. On extension-spring doors, do the pulleys too.
4. Open and close the door a few times to spread it about, then wipe off the excess so it stops attracting dirt.

Do it yourself, or pay someone?

Yourself. A can of silicone garage door lubricant runs about $8 and the job takes 15 minutes, twice a year. The one thing to leave alone: a spring that looks bent, gapped, or rusted through. Those are under brutal tension and will hurt you, so call a technician, who'll charge around $250 to swap one.

What skipping it costs

$150 to $500 is what a dry door tends to bring forward. Metal grinds on metal, which wears out the rollers, stiffens the hinges, rusts the springs, and makes the opener heave harder than it should. The bill lands as a full roller set ($100 to $300, more for premium nylon), a single spring at the Angi average of about $250, and a burned-out opener at the worst end ($300 to $800) if the friction cooks the motor. The springs and the opener are what drive the number up. The lube that would have held all of it off costs $8.

Signs it's overdue

• The door screeches, squeals, or grinds when it moves. Dry rollers and hinges are the usual reason a garage door gets noisy.
• The door moves in jerks or hesitates, or the opener strains and labors harder than it used to.
• Rust or dryness showing on the rollers, hinges, or springs, or rollers that wobble in the track.

When to start thinking about it

A few days' warning does it. Grumpty grumbles 5 days out, then leaves you alone. Mark it done and Grumpty sets the next one, every 12 months, so you can go back to forgetting it exists.

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