Booking a Visit
We run this job out of Mobile, about 8 miles from Prichard, so there's no local branch to call - just one crew that comes to you. When you call, tell us the door's size (single or double) and whether it's stuck shut, stuck open, or made a loud bang before it quit. That tells us whether we're bringing one spring or a pair, and whether the cable or the drum needs a look too. We book the visit around when you're home, not around a dispatch radius, since the whole area runs through the same truck.
If your opener is trying to lift the door with a broken spring, unplug it before we get there. A motor fighting dead springs will strip its gears, and that turns a $200-$300 fix into an opener replacement. We'd rather you wait an extra day with a door that won't move than wreck the opener trying to force it.
We can usually tell you over the phone whether what you're describing is a spring problem or something else - a bent track or a broken roller feels different from a spring that's let go. Either way, we're not guessing blind when we show up; we ask enough up front to bring the right parts the first time.
What You Pay
Prichard's median household income sits at $35,331, noticeably below the wider Mobile service area's $62,318, and we don't price the job differently because of the zip code - a torsion spring is the same part and the same labor whether the house is in Prichard or anywhere else we drive to. What changes the price is what's actually broken: one spring versus a matched pair, standard torsion versus an older extension setup, and whether the cable drums or bearing plate need replacing along with the spring.
We'll tell you the number before we touch the door, not after. If a tech gets under the hood and finds the cables are frayed too, that's a separate line item we call out before adding it, not a surprise on the invoice. We don't do estimates over the phone for anything beyond "probably a spring job" - hardware this old can hide a second problem behind the first one.
The Symptom
Most houses in Prichard went up around 1967
Which puts a lot of this housing stock in the same window as the older end of the wider service area's 1963-1999 build range. A door that old, if it's never been touched, is almost certainly still running its original torsion spring - nobody replaces a spring that hasn't failed yet. That means the spring has had roughly 55 years of cycling, temperature swings, and rust to work against it, and most springs are rated for somewhere around 10,000 open-close cycles before metal fatigue takes over.
- 55 years
What that looks like at your door
It feels heavier than it used to, it won't stay up on its own, or it comes down fast and hard like something let go. Sometimes there's a bang from the garage - that's usually the spring itself snapping, not the door falling. The hardware holding that spring - the center bracket, the winding cones, sometimes the cable drums - is original too, and on a door this old it's often rusted enough that it needs replacing right along with the spring, not just the spring on its own.
How We Fix It
We replace the torsion spring (or the pair, on most double doors) with new springs sized to the door's weight and drum setup - not a universal spring, since the wrong wind or wire gauge on a door this old can put uneven load on one side. If the center bracket or the bearing plate is rusted to the point it won't hold a winding cone safely, we replace that hardware too rather than reuse it. That's the honest limitation here: on a door built around 1967, we often can't just swap the spring and call it done, because the rest of the assembly has been working just as long.
We check the cables and rollers at the same time, since a spring failure on old hardware sometimes drags a frayed cable or a flat-spotted roller down with it. We don't replace parts that don't need it - if the drums and bearings are sound, they stay. The door gets balance-tested after, meaning it should hold steady about halfway open with the opener disconnected. If it doesn't, something's still off and we don't leave until it does.
How Long It Takes
A straight spring swap on one door, with no rusted-out hardware, usually runs about 45 minutes to an hour once the tech has the right springs on the truck. Add another 20-30 minutes if we're also replacing a bearing plate or swapping both springs on a double door. The slow part, if there is one, is diagnosing what else on a 1960s setup needs to come off with the old spring - rusted winding cones sometimes fight the wrench.
We carry common torsion spring sizes on the truck, but if your door needs an unusual size or an extension-spring conversion kit, that part may need to be ordered, which pushes the job to a second visit. We'd rather tell you that up front than keep you waiting in the driveway while we drive back to Mobile for a part we should've brought.
