Have you recently purchased and moved into a new home? Is your garage door now squeaking, creaking, opening very slowly or otherwise not working properly? If the house's previous owner didn't properly maintain the garage door, you may be paying for it now. Unfortunately, while you may be able to do routine maintenance, the average person should not attempt to make repairs on their own garage doors. Here are some reasons why you should leave it to the professionals:

Safety: Certain parts, such as the garage door springs, can be extremely dangerous to replace. The size of the spring and the tensions required mean that it can snap without warning, seriously injuring anyone in the vicinity. The garage doors themselves are also quite heavy, increasing the chance of injury if you need to remove all or part of your garage door in order to apply lubricant or perform another garage door repair. A professional repair technician will know how to fix your garage door safely and correctly, minimizing the risk to yourself or your property.

Parts: Due to the hazards involved in garage door repair, many manufacturers may make replacement parts available only to qualified repair companies. You may think that you're purchasing the correct part online, only to find out that it is a very cheap substitute that has been made out of inferior materials. If this part does happen to actually fit with your model of a garage door, you may find that it wears out much more quickly than the correct part. As a result, you may have to buy the part again, possibly several times during the course of what would have been the lifespan of the correct part. As a result, you could find that the "inexpensive" part is actually more costly than the one available from and installed by your local garage door repair professional.  

Time: It may sound faster and easier to simply perform the repair or repairs yourself, but this isn't always true. Unless you have a complete working knowledge of garage doors, you'll have to research exactly what needs to be done and how to do it. Whether this research includes reading articles, watching videos or trying to make sense of the user manual, it all takes time. You may keep telling yourself that you'll get around to doing it next weekend or the weekend after that, only to find yourself doing something else entirely. Fortunately, when you hire a garage door repair professional (click here for more information) instead, most repairs can be completed in a matter of hours. Instead of continuing to put things off, you can have your garage door fixed while you make dinner for your family or perform some other important household chore.