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Garage door torsion springs Posted by Snowmobile [Email] (#686) [Profile/Gallery] (more from Snowmobile) on Mon, 9 Dec 2013 02:34:31 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
Ok, first off, I know the torsion springs used to balance overhead garage doors store enough energy to kill a person. They are dangerous to work with.
With that out of the way, does anyone here have experience working with them? I have a (heavy) wooden overhead garage door that I need to decommission. Many things are wrong with this one, but among them, one of the 2 torsion springs has snapped. I don't plan to replace the door with another roll top door. I have no intent to reuse any of the current setup.
What I would like to do is release the tension on the second (intact) spring so I can completely remove the door safely. The door is down and will not go up. In this situation, the spring is under maximum tension. When these springs break of natural causes, they are contained on the rod so they don't fly about the garage (and injure people/destroy property). Is there any reason not to induce a break eg by nicking a coil of the spring with a dremel cutoff wheel? I don't like the idea of being close to the spring holding a spinning tool when it breaks, but it does look to not expand significantly in diameter once the tension is released. Most of the force should be directed along the axis of the coil rather than radially. Maybe there is still enough radial force to make that a really bad idea, but I thought I would ask in case it was a standard practice. I want to avoid exposing tools to the energy of the spring (eg a mistake releasing the tension manually from the cone end could launch tooling at lethal speeds).
If there is no safe way to do this, I'll hire a professional. I'm not going to take chances. I just thought I'd pool the wisdom here first.
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