You likely use your garage door more than your front door. Morning and night, every day. When it works, you don't think about it. When it doesn't, it's the only thing you're thinking about.

Garage doors don't give you a countdown. You push the button, the door moves, you pull out of the driveway. On a normal morning, nothing tells you anything is wrong. On a Colorado Springs morning in January, that's when you find out.

That's what we see every winter. The calls start coming in late December and run through February. Almost all of them were preventable.

“What homeowners in Colorado Springs run into is that colder temperatures speed up problems that are already developing,” says Cedric Hendricks, Garage Door Manager at Awesome Home Services. “The people who schedule a tune-up before winter are usually avoiding the emergency call where the car is trapped inside the garage on a freezing morning. For most of the repairs we end up doing in January, the problem was already there in September. The door just hadn't stopped working yet."

Call Awesome Home Services at (719) 800-7121 or contact us online to schedule a garage door tune-up in Colorado Springs before the next cold snap.

Why Springs Break in January (Not in October)

Torsion springs are under tension every time your door moves. They're rated for a certain number of cycles, and they wear down with each one. That's normal. The problem is what cold weather does to a spring that's already worn.

Metal contracts in the cold. A spring that had some life left in October gets brittle fast once temperatures drop. The Pikes Peak area sees swings of 40 degrees or more in a matter of hours. That stress adds up.

When the first real freeze hits, a spring that's been quietly losing tension all fall will sometimes break in half. You'll hear a loud bang, and the door either won't move or will only go partway up.

There's a simple way to check where your springs stand before that happens. Disconnect the opener and try to lift the door by hand. It should stay balanced in the middle when you let go. If it feels heavier than you'd expect or drops when you release it, the springs have already lost tension. That's a repair you want on your schedule, not January's.

Slow Doors and Loud Doors Are Telling You Something

If your door is moving a little slow or squeaking very loudly when it shuts, those behaviors signal two cold-weather issues.

Regular lubricant gets thick in the cold. When the grease on your tracks, rollers, and hinges stiffens up, the opener works harder to move the door. That extra friction wears parts down faster and puts more load on the motor.

Metal tracks also contract slightly as temperatures drop, and a track that was perfectly aligned in September can develop tight spots by December.

Our lube-and-tune service swaps out old lubricant for cold-weather product, adjusts the tracks, and checks the system's tension and balance. If you get this done in the fall, you’ll notice the difference all winter.

A slow door in October is fixable in about an hour. The same door in January is a different kind of call.

Sensors and Keypads Are the Two Things That Fail Quietly

Photo-eye sensors sit at the bottom of your door frame and send a beam across the opening. They're reliable most of the year.

In winter, snow, ice, or condensation can block the beam. When that happens, the door won't close because it thinks something is in the way. The fix is usually quick once you know what you're looking at.

But standing outside in the cold trying to figure out why the door keeps reversing is not a quick fix. It's a frustrating one.

Exterior keypads have a different issue. Battery performance drops in cold weather. A keypad that worked fine in October can stop responding in December with no warning. If your keypad is over a year old and hasn't had fresh batteries going into winter, change them now. It takes two minutes.

Cleaning your sensors and swapping the keypad batteries before the season changes is the kind of maintenance that takes five minutes and saves an hour.

What It Actually Costs to Wait

Emergency garage door repairs happen at the worst times. Cold morning, car stuck inside, somewhere to be. After-hours labor costs more than scheduled maintenance. The parts are the same. The bill isn't.

A $49 tune-up that checks your springs, lubricates the system, and confirms your sensors and keypad are working in October is a fraction of what an after-hours emergency call runs in January.

What We Check During a Late-Year Inspection

A full garage door tune-up covers more than just adding lubricant.

Take a look at what we go through on every visit:

Spring inspection – We check torsion and extension springs for wear, cracks, and remaining life. A spring that's close to the end of its cycle rating is one we want to find before it fails.
Hardware review – Bearings, cables, and rollers all wear gradually. Nylon rollers tend to degrade in ways that aren't visible until something goes wrong.
Balance test – We disconnect the opener and manually lift the door to confirm it holds at the midpoint. An unbalanced door puts extra load on the opener every single cycle.
Track alignment – We check that tracks are properly aligned and fastened. Tight spots create friction and wear. They're easy to miss until the door starts hesitating.
Structural check – We look at the door frame and support system, especially in older homes, where frame alignment can shift.
Sensor calibration – We clean the photo-eye sensors and confirm the beam is aligned and clear.
Lubrication – We apply cold-weather lubricant to springs, tracks, rollers, hinges, and the drive mechanism.
Keypad and remote test – We confirm every entry device is working and replace batteries where needed.

Each of these checks takes a few minutes when the system is running. Skipping them turns a simple repair in September into an emergency replacement in January.

Schedule Before Winter Makes the Decision for You

Loud noises, slow movement, and a door that's harder to lift than it used to be don’t just signal that something might go wrong. They indicate that something is already going wrong. It gets worse as it gets colder.

The homeowners who don't call us in January are almost always the ones who called us in October. The inspection takes less than an hour, but the peace of mind lasts all winter.

Get on Awesome Home Services’s garage door maintenance schedule before the cold weather hits. Call (719) 800-7121 or contact us online.