How long do openers last?
A garage door opener produced today will last between 12 – 15 years. The life of your opener will depend on its power and frequency of use.
- Match the power of the opener with the door size.
- Having your door serviced
- Frequency of use.
- Quality of the opener build.
- Faults in the system.
- Natural life span.
In the early days, manufacturers of garage door openers usually only made one opener for each type of door. That being the case they had to make it for all the door sizes available in the market. What this meant is that, in most cases, you would have had an opener that was much more powerful than you needed on your door. While the cost of the openers was high you did end up with a product that would last a long time.
These days door opener manufacturers make a range of garage door openers to suit different sized garage doors. By doing this they can provide an opener that is more affordable for the average door.
Matching your door specifications with your opener.
When selecting a door opener you have a wide range of power options to choose from. Some openers are specifically designed for smaller doors while others are designed for larger doors. Doing this allows the manufacturers to produce openers that are on point for price. It also allows them to be able to provide an attractive warranty period.
If you have a double door then you must use an opener that is intended for that door size or larger if you want it to last the distance.
Have your door serviced.
The 2 things that reduce the life of an opener the most are weight and resistance from your door. Because your opener operates your door you don’t get the opportunity to feel your doors weigh or resistance.
Over time the springs that counterbalance the weight of your door stretch and will need to be adjusted to restore proper balance to the weight of the door. This increased weight places extra demand on the opener and wears it down over time.
Additional as your door ages the lubricant on your door dries out and causes resistance between moving parts. You won’t notice this because it happens slowly over time but your door will become harder and harder for the opener to lift the door.
By the time that your opener indicates that there is a problem with one of these two things the damage will already have occurred. Having your door properly serviced will increase the life of your garage door opener.
Frequency of use.
How often you use your garage door will have an impact on the working life of your garage door opener.
Newer building design has seen the garages being built at the front of the house with an internal door connecting the garage to the house. Because of this we have seen a significant increase in the use of the average garage door. In most cases the garage door will get more use than the front door of the house.
The standard inclusion of door openers on garage doors has added to the convenience of using the garage door as well.
With the change in house design and the standard inclusion and convenience of openers we see garage doors getting more than twice the use that they did in the past. Around 10-12 cycles a day compared to 4 cycles in the past.
This significant increase in the frequency of use for your garage door opener naturally impacts the expected life of the opener. For this reason we recommend that you seriously consider stepping up your selection of opener to the next level of power where you can.
Doing so will ensure that you are not getting a product that will struggle with the demands of frequent daily use.
Quality of the opener build.
One of the first things I like to do with a new product is to take apart the casing to take a look inside. One of the things I will look at is the quality of the soldering on the circuit board. Cheap circuit boards look cheap and quickly expose the product as poor quality.
Other things I look for are the strength of the chassis and the sensibility of how components are assembled. Good quality openers are typically simple and robust in their construction. The trained eye can spot when manufacturers have compromised quality to save petty amounts of money in an effort to reduce costs. It makes their products look financially attractive to buyers but ultimately they are junk.
While substandard products do make it into the marketplace, from time to time, the vast majority of distributors are more interested in protecting their reputation than saving a few dollars on suspect door openers.
Faults in the system.
When you have your garage door opener installed there is an industry standard we call a settling in period. The settling in period is the first two weeks where your new opener interacts with your garage door to find its natural grove. Grove is about how all the components interact. In some cases there will be conflicts that will show up that just need an adjustment and in other cases hard faults will present themselves.
The good news is that most hard issues (faults) will happen in the first two weeks or so. Once faulty components are replaced you should expect trouble free operation of your opener going forward. Unfortunately some faults or weaknesses in the opener may not show up for many years. Well beyond the warranty period for your opener. All it takes is a sub standard circuit component or cracked solder for your opener to stop working.
Natural life span.
All garage door openers have a natural life span. Although it is hard to determine exactly what that life span is going to be because of all the small variables that affect the true life of the opener. Every door is used differently, maintained differently and installed differently and this will impact on the life of the opener.
It is strange to see a customer’s surprise when their garage door opener “suddenly packed it in” – after 15 years of reliable service. I think that it goes to the idea that they are usually so reliable that we assume that they will just continue to work. But, in the end, all garage door openers will need to be replaced.