Why we replace both springs

The short answer

The short answer

Torsion springs are installed as a matched pair and rated in cycles, and both springs have run every one of those cycles together. When one breaks, its partner is at the end of the same fatigue life — so replacing only the broken one reliably means a second call, a second trip, and a second bill within months.

Springs are rated in cycles, not years

A torsion spring's life is measured in cycles — one full open and close of the door. The standard residential spring is rated for roughly 10,000 of them. How long that lasts depends entirely on how you live: at two cycles a day it is well over a decade, at four it is about seven years, and for a household that uses the garage as the front door — eight or ten cycles a day — the same spring is done in three to four.

That is why the age of the door is the wrong question and how you use it is the right one. Two identical doors on the same street in Davenport can be a decade apart in spring life.

It is also why spring failure feels sudden but is not. Steel fatigues a tiny amount on every cycle, cracks grow from the inside of the coil outward, and the bang in the garage is simply the cycle the crack finished on.

The second spring has done every cycle the first one did

Twin springs go in on the same day, with the same rating, and share the load of every lift after that. When one lets go, the other is not a healthy spare — it is a spring with an identical history that happens to still be in one piece.

Replace just the broken one and you now have a new spring paired with an exhausted one. The old spring fails — months later, sometimes weeks — and the door is back where it started, except you have now paid for two visits.

There is a balance argument too. Springs lose a little of their torque as they age and take a set, so a fresh spring paired with a tired one delivers uneven lift. The door still runs, but the opener works harder than it should and the balance is never quite right.

The arithmetic is labor, not parts

The cost of a spring visit is mostly the visit: getting a technician and a stocked truck to your door, unloading the system safely, winding the new springs, and balancing the door. The steel itself is the smaller share of the bill.

Doing the second spring during the same visit adds a part and a few minutes. Doing it three months later as its own call means paying the labor twice for what could have been one job. That is the entire reason the trade replaces pairs — it is not an upsell, it is arithmetic.

When to spend up on high-cycle springs

Spring life scales with the spring: heavier wire and a longer coil spread the same work across more steel. High-cycle springs rated at 20,000 cycles or more cost modestly more than standard ones — nowhere near double — because, again, most of what you are paying for is the visit.

If your garage door is effectively your front door, high-cycle springs are the best value upgrade on it. If the door moves twice a day, standard springs will outlast most of the hardware around them and the upgrade buys you little. We will tell you which household yours is.