General repair
Garage Door Repair
Tell us what the door is doing and we'll get it in front of someone who can fix it — with the price agreed before the work starts.
See what's includedRepairs across Rochester
Garage door repair · Rochester, NY
A Rochester door that catches on one side is telling you about the concrete.
A Rochester door that catches on one side is telling you about the concrete. Say what yours is doing and see the price first.
12 repairs coveredFree to askPrice before work
Do you cover Rochester?Yes — right across it
Browncroft, Maplewood, Corn Hill, and the streets either side of them.
What can I get done?12 residential repairs
Springs, cables, openers, sensors, tracks, panels, seals, and full replacements.
What will it cost?Agreed before anything is touched
You hear what failed and what it costs first. Saying no at that point costs you nothing.
How fast?A person replies the same day
Ask before 5 p.m. on a weekday and you hear back that business day.
Why us for this door
Frost under the slab can shove a Rochester opening out of square.
Ground freezing under an apron lifts it unevenly, and once the opening is no longer square the door catches on one side and runs clean on the other. New rollers into a moved opening buy a few months. The frame has to be re-set against where the concrete actually is now.
Measure the gap between the top of the door and the ceiling while you're there, because it decides what track can be fitted. Say which side it catches and what you can see from the doorway. Cost agreed with you before work starts.
Get my door fixedWhere we work
Which side does it catch?
Corn Hill and the 19th Ward have old slabs and tight openings; Browncroft and North Winton Village are roomier. Say which is yours.
- BrowncroftTree-lined streets of vintage owner-occupied homes east of the city, many with older detached garages on slabs that shift with the winter freeze and thaw.
- MaplewoodEarly twentieth-century bungalows and colonials about four miles from downtown, generally with a detached garage at the rear of the lot.
- Corn HillClose-packed older housing near downtown where garages are often built into a raised basement or under a rear addition, leaving little headroom above the door.
- 19th WardThe largest residential area in the city, from small cottages to large houses, with many narrow single-width driveways running back to detached garages.
- Park AvenueDense pre-war housing with limited off-street parking; where a garage exists it is usually detached, unheated and reached from a very narrow drive.
- SwillburgSmall early-century houses on tight lots with unheated detached garages, where salted slush off cars can sit on the floor for days.
- North Winton VillageCompact interwar homes with single detached garages behind the house, reached by a long driveway that funnels meltwater toward the door.
Just outside Rochester?
Plenty of the work we take isn't in Rochester proper. These are the towns around it and what tends to be different about a door there.
- IrondequoitNortheast toward the lake. Attached garages of one vintage, and the salt that comes off the road every winter finishes the bottom brackets first.
- GreeceNorthwest along the lake, tract housing of one era where lake-effect snow drifts against the door.
- BrightonSoutheast, older homes with detached garages on deep lots and openings too narrow for a modern car.
- GatesWest, single-story housing where the same door and opener repeat house after house down the street.
- WebsterNortheast on the lake side, newer subdivisions with wide doors taking wind straight off the water.
Don't see your street or your town? These are the places where the housing changes enough to change the job — not the edge of where we go, and not a promise about your exact address either. We take work across Rochester and the wider New York area, and the address you send is what actually gets checked.Check my address
Repairs in Rochester
Pick by what the door is doing.
Springs and balance
Garage Door Spring Repair
If your door suddenly weighs a couple hundred pounds, a spring has almost certainly let go. Leave it down, keep everyone clear, and let someone with the right winding bars deal with it.
See what's included
Cables and drums
Garage Door Cable & Drum Repair
One corner sitting lower, or a cable hanging off its drum, means the lift system is out of balance. It wants looking at before the next cycle, not after.
See what's included
Tracks, rollers, hardware
Track, Roller & Hardware Repair
Grinding in the same spot, a door that shakes the whole wall, a roller creeping out of its track — all cheap to sort now, all expensive once the door comes off.
See what's included
Off-track and stuck
Off-Track & Stuck Door Repair
Every extra cycle bends another panel and drags more cable out of line. Leave it where it is, keep the opening clear, and get it stabilized properly.
See what's included
Openers
Garage Door Opener Repair
Motors take the blame for dead springs constantly. Worth knowing which one you've got before you buy an opener you didn't need.
See what's includedRochester guide
What tends to go wrong here.
Frost under the slab can shove the opening out of square
Rochester spends the winter crossing back and forth over freezing, and the ground under a garage slab moves with it. On the older detached garages through Browncroft and Maplewood that shows up as a door which suddenly catches on one side, or rollers that squeal at the same point every time.
It isn't the door going wrong so much as the opening shifting around it. Forcing it with the opener bends track and flattens rollers, which turns an alignment problem into a parts list. If yours started binding after a cold snap and a thaw, say so, and say which side it catches on.
Measure the gap between the top of the door and the ceiling
A lot of Rochester garages are older and shorter than the hardware people want to put in them. Around Corn Hill and across the 19th Ward you'll find garages built into a raised basement or tucked under a rear addition, with very little room above the door and not much behind it either.
That measurement decides what can even be fitted. Standard torsion hardware and a long ceiling rail need headroom; a low-headroom conversion or a wall-mounted opener doesn't. Stand inside, run a tape from the top of the opening up to the joists, and send us the number. Two minutes of that stops a technician arriving with the wrong opener.
Brine off your car sits under the bottom brackets all winter
The slush that drops off a car in a Rochester driveway is salt water, and it pools on the garage floor where the bottom brackets, the cable ends and the lowest few inches of the door live. On the streets around Swillburg and North Winton Village, where the garage is unheated, that puddle can sit for days.
Corrosion down there is the sort you don't see until a cable frays or a bracket lets go under load. If the bottom of your door is soft, flaking or stained, mention it. And leave the bottom brackets alone, because they stay under spring tension even with the door on the floor.
Start your Rochester note with what you can see from the doorway
Where you are, whether the garage is attached or detached, whether it is one door or two, and what happened: the point in the travel where it stopped, the sound it made, and whether a car is trapped. You don't have to name a part.
Photos from standing height help. Nothing that needs a ladder is worth it. A message in before 5 p.m. on a weekday gets a reply from a person the same business day, and the technician confirms the work and the cost with you before starting. Using the site costs nothing.
Most common around Rochester
Know when to stop using the door.
Don't wait
Door will not close
The door stays open, stops, or will not begin closing.
What to do about itStop using the door
Broken torsion spring
A gap appears in the spring above the door or a loud bang precedes a heavy door.
What to do about itDon't wait
Blocked or misaligned safety sensors
Sensor lights blink or the door will not close from a remote.
What to do about itDon't wait
Opener does not operate
The opener is silent, hums, or runs without moving the door.
What to do about itBook it in
Pricing and written quote clarity
The customer wants scope, parts, labor, fees, and alternatives in writing.
What to do about itRochester questions
Asked before anyone books anything.
The door goes up a foot, stalls, and comes back down. Why?
The opener has hit resistance and backed off. In Rochester that is often a roller jammed where the track has moved, but it can equally be a spring, a frayed cable or something caught at the base. Stop after a try or two, look along both tracks from inside for a bend or a gap, and tell us what you find without touching anything under tension.
It will only close if I hold the wall button down.
Holding the button overrides the safety sensors, which means the sensors are unhappy about something. It might be a bumped bracket, a dirty lens, or low winter sun coming straight down the driveway into one eye. Look at the two lights near the floor and tell us whether they are steady, blinking or dark. Don't tape or jumper them to get the door shut.
There is a gap in the spring above the door. Can I still use it?
No. A spring with a gap in it has broken, and the counterbalance that made the door feel light is gone. Running the opener now drags the whole weight through the cables and the top section. Park outside, keep everyone from under the opening, and leave the springs, drums and cables to somebody with the winding bars.
The sensor light blinks whenever it snows. Are they broken?
Usually not. Snow on the lens, slush thrown up by a tire, or a bracket knocked out of line by a shovel will all do it, and the door refusing to close is the system working properly. Clean both lenses, clear the floor either side, and check the brackets are still pointing at each other. If it keeps blinking on a dry day, tell us.
Nothing at all happens when I press the remote or the wall button.
Start with power. Check the outlet the opener is plugged into and any GFCI on that circuit, since an unheated Rochester garage trips them more often than people expect. If it has power and still does nothing, don't keep cycling it. Note whether the light comes on, whether the wall button responds differently to the remote, and send that with your request.
How do I make sure I am not talked into a whole new door?
Ask for the scope in writing before anything is touched, which is how the shops here are expected to work. You get told what failed, what the repair covers and what it costs, and a replacement should be offered as a separate choice with its own figure rather than folded in. You are free to decline both.
Rochester, NY
Start the Rochester note with what you can see.
Which side catches, the headroom above the door, and your cross streets. The price is agreed with you before work begins.