It’s late at night. You’ve just put your baby down for bed and sat down with a good book. Right as you get perfectly comfortable, your spouse comes home and wakes the whole house by opening that blasted garage door! It’s finally time to get this noisy garage door situation figured out and settled. Let Neighborhood Garage Door Service of Stamford, CT help you troubleshoot some common causes for a noisy garage door.
Poor Lubrication
Your overhead door has lots of moving metal parts. If not properly lubricated, they can cause all kinds of screeching and scratching. Using the appropriate type of lubricants, make sure to thoroughly lubricate the rollers, tracks, springs, hinges, and weather stripping. The stripping will require a different lubricant.
Worn Out Parts
You should also check for basic maintenance problems. Refer to your operator’s manual. Inspect all the parts, especially moving parts, for damaged, worn, or loose pieces. Tighten up any loose bolts or screws that you may find.
Look closely for any bending or warping in the tracks. Look in the channels of the tracks for grooves or wear spots indicating rubbing from the rollers that would produce noise. Check all the hinges on the overhead door panels to make sure they are not broken or stuck.
Inspect each of the rollers, looking for damage. Also, be sure the rollers are rolling along the track and not sliding. Sliding along the tracks can create a great deal of noise in your garage door’s operation. If you find that the rollers need replacing, consider buying nylon rollers. Nylon rollers are much quieter and come in two basic construction styles. Black nylon rollers are 100% nylon with no ball bearing. White nylon rollers are steel based with a nylon covering and have steel ball bearings. These are much stronger and will last longer.
Noisy Opener
Your overhead door opener can be a huge source of noise. First, the drive system can be a factor. If you have a chain drive opener system, you will experience a lot of noise from the opener itself. Consider upgrading to either a screw drive, or belt drive opener system. A screw drive system is quieter than a chain drive system, and allows for smoother operation. For the quietest operation possible, you’ll want a belt drive opener system. These utilize a steel reinforced rubber drive belt to give you a whisper level of operation.
The garage door opener can also interact with your garage roof to turn your entire garage into a speaker amplifying any noise in your system. As the opener vibrates or hums, the motion can transfer into the overall garage structure. Vibration isolators can be installed to help reduce this effect. They are used to attach the garage door opener to the mounting brackets and absorb vibration. This prevents the vibrations from being amplified.
Garage Door Construction Materials
Believe it or not, the garage door itself can also be the source of some of your noise issues. Cheaper garage doors that have no insulation are much noisier. Without the insulation, the metal panels span a long distance with no support. This allows them to vibrate a great deal. In contrast, higher quality insulated doors don’t have this problem. The metal panels on either side of the door are bonded to the foam core insulation. This prevents excess movement and give the door a smoother, quieter ride along the tracks.
If it’s time to make some upgrades to your noisy garage door, call us at Neighborhood Garage Door Service of Stamford, CT right away. We can advise you on which parts you may need to replace. Our knowledgeable staff can give you the information you need to make the right choice.
We can also come to you! Our professionally trained technicians can perform a hands-on inspection to troubleshoot the issues you’re experiencing and get repairs started immediately. Don’t wait, call us today!
