How much does garage door spring replacement cost?

Where the money in the job actually goes

The spring itself is the smaller half of the bill. Most of what you pay for is the twenty minutes of controlled work that gets it wound to the right tension without anybody getting hurt, plus the balance check afterwards that decides whether the door will behave for the next seven years. A technician also has to size the replacement before ordering it, which means measuring wire diameter, coil length and inside diameter off the old spring and weighing the door if the numbers do not add up. That is why nobody sensible gives a firm price on the phone without knowing the door.

Four things push a job toward the upper end of the range. A pair rather than a single. High-cycle wire on a door that gets used heavily. Galvanised or coated wire, which adds roughly 10 to 20 percent on the parts line and earns it back within a mile of the water. And corrosion, because set screws seized into a cone or a drum turn a tidy hour into a fight with an extractor. On a beachfront door the last of those four is the one that shows up most often.

Two springs, and the question of doing both

Most double doors carry two springs on one shaft either side of a center bracket. When one goes, the other has done the identical number of trips in the identical air, so it is not a fresh part sitting next to a failed one. Fitting both at once costs less than fitting one now and the second in eight months, because the second visit brings another call-out with it. On a single door with one spring the question does not arise, which is part of why single door jobs land lower in the range.

The number worth comparing is not the price of the spring, it is the cost per year of service you get from it. A spring a few miles inland commonly reaches its tenth or twelfth year. A few streets back from the sand in Oceanside, six or seven years is a more honest expectation on standard wire, and a vacation rental with constant traffic burns through its cycle rating faster again. Paying a little more for coated high-cycle wire on a busy coastal door usually works out cheaper across a decade.