Ottawa Garage Door Maintenance Checklist: What to Do Every Spring and Fall

Ottawa's climate is genuinely hard on garage doors. Between November and March, temperatures swing from +5°C to -30°C within a single week. Road salt migrates everywhere. Freeze-thaw cycles work at every seal, every joint, every cable strand. Then summer brings 35°C heat and humidity.

Most cities can get away with one inspection per year. Ottawa needs two.

When to do it

Spring — March or April, after the last hard freeze. You're looking for what winter did to the door: cracked seals, rusted springs, freeze-damaged rollers.

Fall — October, before the first hard frost. You're preparing the door for five months of Ottawa winter. This is when you lubricate everything and catch anything that won't survive the cold.

Set a calendar reminder now. Twice a year, 20 minutes each time.

The owner's visual check — 10 minutes, no tools

Springs

Look at the large spring (or springs, for double doors) above the door — the torsion spring mounted on a horizontal shaft. You're looking for a visible gap in the spring coil (it has snapped), rust deeper than surface level, or uneven coiling.

Cables

Look at the steel cables on each side of the door, running from the bottom corner brackets up to the drum near the ceiling. You're looking for fraying (individual wire strands splaying out), kinking (a sharp permanent bend), or slack on one side (one cable noticeably looser than the other). If you see any of these, call before the next hard freeze. DO NOT TOUCH the cables — they're under significant tension even when the door is closed.

Rollers

Look at the small wheels on the door's edges: cracked or chipped nylon (the white or grey wheel portion), rollers that wobble visibly in the track, rollers that look seized — not spinning freely when the door moves.

Tracks

Look for dents or bends near the bottom of the vertical track (vehicle impact is the most common cause), gaps between the roller and the inside of the track channel, and debris packed in the channel — gravel, dried mud, leaves.

Bottom seal

This is the component Ottawa's climate destroys fastest. Look for cracking, gaps where the seal no longer contacts the ground, or missing pieces. A compromised bottom seal lets cold air, water, and rodents into the garage. It's one of the cheapest repairs (one of the more affordable garage door repairs) and one of the most neglected.

Balance test — the most important 30 seconds

With the garage door fully closed, pull the red emergency release cord to disconnect the opener. Lift the door manually to waist height (about 3 feet) and let go. A properly balanced door should stay where you put it — allowed to drift a foot in either direction, but it should not drop to the floor or fly open on its own.

• Door drops: springs are weak, worn, or under-tensioned
• Door shoots up: springs are over-tensioned

Either way, this is a tech job — see the section below on what only a tech should touch.

What you can lubricate yourself

Use silicone spray or white lithium grease. Apply in October (fall prep) and March (spring maintenance).

Lubricate these:

• Rollers — spray the bearing at the center, not the nylon wheel body
• Hinges — the pivot point on each hinge where panels flex, a light coat
• Torsion spring — a light coat of silicone spray along the entire coil, with the door in the open position (spring at rest)
• Tracks — a light wipe along the inside of the vertical track with a silicone-dampened rag

Do NOT lubricate:

• The bottom seal — lubrication attracts grit and accelerates wear
• The plastic drive gear on the opener — designed to run dry; lubricating it causes faster wear from dust adhesion

What only a tech should adjust

Spring tension. If the balance test showed a problem, call a tech. Spring-related injuries are the leading cause of serious garage door accidents. The winding bars, correct turn count, and proper technique matter — this is not a YouTube project.

Cable tension and cable drums. Cable tension is directly linked to spring wind. Adjusting one without the other creates a new imbalance.

Track alignment beyond visual. Loose track bolts are fine to tighten. Realigning a track that's out of plumb requires measuring, repositioning, and checking that the roller-to-track gap is consistent throughout the full door travel.

Opener force and limit settings. Increasing force to compensate for a heavy door — instead of fixing the actual problem — can prevent the door from reversing on an obstruction. That's a safety hazard, particularly with children and pets.

What I typically find in Ottawa spring inspections

Cracked or missing bottom seals are on the majority of homes I visit in spring. Ottawa's freeze-thaw season is brutal on rubber — a seal that looked fine in October will often have a 6-inch crack by April. Water gets under the door, freezes, and tears the seal from the inside.

Rust on torsion springs, particularly in homes where the garage faces the road. Salt spray from traffic and from cars driven in mid-winter migrates to the spring. On springs that are 8+ years old, I often find pitting rust that's past cosmetic and into structural. Replacing a spring before it breaks is significantly less disruptive than replacing it after a failure at 7 AM when you need to be somewhere.

Roller damage from frozen tracks — in unheated garages especially, water gets into the track channel, freezes around the roller, and either seizes the bearing or chips the nylon wheel. The opener then drags a seized roller up the track and damages the track edge. This one often goes unnoticed until the track itself is bent.

None of these are failures you caused. They're just what Ottawa's climate does to these components. Catching them in spring means a planned, affordable repair. Missing them means an emergency call in February.

If anything in this checklist flagged a concern, call (613) 703-3921. I offer tune-up and safety check appointments across Ottawa, Kanata, Barrhaven, Nepean, Orléans, Stittsville, Manotick, and more than 20 other communities. Same-day availability for calls booked by noon. Everything comes with a 3-year parts and labor warranty.

— Michael