Doing It Yourself
A torsion spring is wound under enough tension to break bones or worse if the winding bars slip, and that risk doesn't go down because the house is a certain age. If you've got a double door with two springs, don't replace one and leave the other - a 1987-era spring that hasn't failed yet is close behind the one that just did, and mismatched spring age on a double door throws the whole balance off. What you can safely do yourself: pull the cord to disconnect the opener, prop the door with locking pliers above the rollers so it can't slam, and leave the rest alone. If you're not sure whether it's the spring or the opener's drive gear that's gone, listen for the sound - a spring snap is usually a loud bang you'd have heard, not a quiet stall.
How Long It Takes
Most torsion spring jobs on a single door run under an hour once we're on site, a bit longer on a double door with two springs or if the drums and cables need resetting along with it. The bigger variable for Paradise calls is the drive itself - 14 miles each way from North Las Vegas means the window we give you accounts for traffic on that route, not just the repair time. We don't keep a depot in Paradise, so same-day isn't guaranteed the way it might be for a job three streets from the shop, but we don't stretch out a simple spring swap once we're there either.
What You Pay
We don't have a standard price list to quote here - spring cost depends on wire size, door weight, and whether it's one spring or two, and we'd rather tell you a real number after we've looked at the door than give you a range that doesn't match what you've actually got. What we can tell you is that a same-era double-door job with two springs costs more than a single spring on a one-car door, simply because it's two springs and more cable work, not a markup for the extra mileage out to Paradise.
