221–230 of 344 posts
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Famous last words.
That makes no sense. I'm with OP. You don't see mass casualties among overhead door installation crews. So, there must be a safe way to do it. I've also installed around 6 overhead doors, and followed all safety instructions that I learned from an overhead door installer. I've never once been killed.
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I don’t understand why it’s even considered safe to have one of these springs in one’s garage without a solid shield of some sort. While the energy involved is small on the scale of energy storage devices ( Which brings to mind some rather different designs. A rather small motor with a lot of mechanical advantage can easily open a close a garage door, and if a DC or low voltage AC motor is used, it could do so quite…
I’m not an expert in how springs break but wouldn’t an ejection of material require the spring breaking in at least 2 places that are close enough to not loop around the rod? I’m curious if anyone’s ever been hurt by one breaking (other than when actively working on it).
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My garage door is no longer connected to the opener, I just swing it up manually twice a day. My kid can do so as well without issue. Maybe mine is lighter.
Are the springs still in place? If yes, then they are still doing most of the work.
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Ramps are very good. I don't know why anyone would use a jack for an oil change...
Depends on the jack. The people I know that do this use a jack and jack stands rather than just a jack. The jack is just the tool to go up/down.
This should be drilled into the heads of anyone who touches a jack. It's only a tool for lifting the car onto jackstands.
The reason it's not expensive to have someone else do it is that if done properly it's not dangerous. Otherwise culture would be lumping garage door repairmen with emergency responders who take dangerous jobs but keep society functioning. You couldn't get it done for $200 if the career killed people frequently. The "if done properly" is critical, yes, if done wrong it's incredibly dangerous, but if you understand and…
EMTs, who are basically doing the bulk of "saving people's lives" - are paid the lowest wages, worse than firefighters, police, and often even the dispatchers. Why? Because the market is totally saturated with former armed services folks. And in many states, assaulting a cop will get you in a fuckton of trouble, assaulting a firefighter will get you in a fair bit of trouble, but assaulting an EMT will (depending on the state) often get you...an ambulance ride, which you were probably getting anyway.
Retail workers, transportation workers, field workers...all very dangerous jobs and bottom-barrel pay. Same for people in meat processing; just look up the articles about migrant children working in meat packing plants (or don't if you have kids, because there are some incredibly horrific things happening to them.)
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My father is a handyman for multiple large apartment buildings. Climbing onto a roof and changing garage springs are 2 things he says he'll never do. I was surprised how specific he was about it. He knows lots of other handymen so I'm guessing he has heard lots of horror stories. Garage springs are no joke.
I've changed garage door springs myself; it was pretty easy. However, there are different types. The torsion ones are the scary ones, and I wouldn't touch those either. Other (generally older) doors have longitudinal springs. When the door is open, the spring is uncompressed, and very easy to change. Just make sure to block the door so it can't close while you're working, and install the safety wire (it goes through…
The reason it's not expensive to have someone else do it is that if done properly it's not dangerous. Otherwise culture would be lumping garage door repairmen with emergency responders who take dangerous jobs but keep society functioning. You couldn't get it done for $200 if the career killed people frequently. The "if done properly" is critical, yes, if done wrong it's incredibly dangerous, but if you understand and…
On what planet do you live where dangerousness of work has anything to do with pay? EMTs, who are basically doing the bulk of "saving people's lives" - are paid the lowest wages, worse than firefighters, police, and often even the dispatchers. Why? Because the market is totally saturated with former armed services folks. And in many states, assaulting a cop will get you in a fuckton of trouble, assaulting a firefight…
The reason it's not expensive to have someone else do it is that if done properly it's not dangerous. Otherwise culture would be lumping garage door repairmen with emergency responders who take dangerous jobs but keep society functioning. You couldn't get it done for $200 if the career killed people frequently. The "if done properly" is critical, yes, if done wrong it's incredibly dangerous, but if you understand and…
On what planet do you live where dangerousness of work has anything to do with pay? EMTs, who are basically doing the bulk of "saving people's lives" - are paid the lowest wages, worse than firefighters, police, and often even the dispatchers. Why? Because the market is totally saturated with former armed services folks. And in many states, assaulting a cop will get you in a fuckton of trouble, assaulting a firefight…
Then again, underwater welding and helicopter chainsaw pilot pays quite well.
So sometimes it does, but it's not correlated.
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Right? One of my garage door lifting cables broke, and although I knew how to replace it, the $150 or so that it cost to have an actual professional fix it was money well spent. I've done car repairs for decades, and climbed up on roofs when I had to, but I'm not dicking around with garage door springs.
It’s not that it’s a hard job, the labor cost comes in at around $100-$150/hr as you said. It takes about an hour to do.. But why am I going to do this when my time could be better spent elsewhere? Saving $1000 tiling your shower? That makes sense. Saving $100 and potentially maim yourself in the process? Hello garage door repairman.
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Are the springs still in place? If yes, then they are still doing most of the work.
They exist, but are not connected to anything. It just swings on the rollers.