When the opener runs and the door does not budge, check the steel shaft above the opening before anything else. A snapped counterbalance spring is the most common reason a door will not open at all, and you can confirm it from the floor with a torch, without touching a single part under tension.
Confirming it from the floor
Stand inside with the light on and look at the horizontal shaft running above the door. On a torsion system the springs are wound onto that shaft. A broken one shows a clean gap of one to two inches in the coil, the two cut ends separated and often splayed slightly apart. Older doors with extension springs instead carry them along the horizontal tracks on each side. A break there shows as one side hanging slack while the other is still stretched.
That is the whole inspection. Look, do not touch. Keep your hands away from the winding cones, do not pull on the lift cables, and do not lift the door to test the theory. With one spring gone the door weighs what it actually weighs, and an insulated double can pass 200 pounds. The remaining counterbalance is now holding that unevenly.
Unplug the opener and leave the door where it is
This is the part people skip and regret. With a spring broken the motor is lifting the full weight of the door, which is how a nylon drive gear strips its teeth or a logic board cooks. Two or three more attempts can turn a spring job into a spring job plus opener repair. Pull the plug. If the door is down, leave it down and use the side door. If it is stuck partly open, do not stand under it and do not park under it.
Why the first hard freeze finds the weak spring
Springs are rated in cycles, not years. Ten thousand cycles is the builder standard, which a family opening the door four or five times a day burns through in seven to twelve years. Richardson averages about 29 nights a year with a low at or below 32°F according to NWS Fort Worth normals for DFW, and those mornings are when tired springs give up. Cold steel is stiffer, the metal has contracted, and stress at the cone peaks exactly when the door is asked to move for the first time in nine hours.
Add a bottom seal stuck to a frosted slab and the load gets worse. February 2021 made the point at scale: DFW sat at or below freezing for 139 straight hours and hit minus 2°F on the 16th. Doors froze down, people pressed the button anyway, and the failures were springs and cables rather than motors.
The other reasons a door will not open
- No power to the opener. A tripped GFCI or a lampholder adapter that has worked loose. The motor light tells you in a second.
- Lock or vacation mode on the wall console, which kills remotes and blocks travel. Holding the button a few seconds clears it.
- A snapped lift cable, which leaves the door jammed at an angle in the track rather than simply refusing to lift.
- Off track. If a roller has left the track the door binds and the opener stops. That is a rehang, not a spring.
- Stripped drive gear. Motor hums, sprocket does not turn, plastic dust in the bottom of the housing.
What a spring replacement actually involves
The door gets clamped to the track and any tension still in the shaft is bled out with two proper winding bars. Four numbers come off the old spring: wire gauge, inner coil diameter, relaxed length, and wind direction. Read against the weighed door, those decide what goes back on. The new spring is wound to a calculated turn count, then proved by hand with the opener still disconnected, and only then do the force and travel limits get set to how the door now moves.
A single torsion spring fitted is an estimated $185 to $345. A matched pair on a double door is an estimated $265 to $450. An extension spring pair on an older door is an estimated $155 to $275. A 20,000 or 25,000 cycle upgrade adds an estimated $60 to $120 and roughly doubles the service life, which is worth it on a door that cycles six or eight times a day.