With all the joints, pulleys, springs and moving parts included in a garage door’s mechanism, the causes of excessive noise may be hard to pinpoint. Nevertheless, if you wish to alleviate annoying creaks and squeals, you must first identify where the sound is coming from.
Some types of garage door opener systems are naturally louder than others. New homeowners may be surprised at the rumble of a chain driven mechanism if they were used to a quieter belt drive in the past. The natural sound a garage door opener makes cannot be changed unless you replace the whole mechanism. However, there are several common problems that can make garage door openers noisier than normal.
1 – The garage door is not lubricated properly.
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- Garage door parts need to be lubricated periodically or the movement between them will eventually cause excess noise. It is very easy to do this maintenance work yourself with a spray-on lubricant. It should be applied to the chain drive, pulleys, screw and the metal track that the rollers run in and the hinges on the garage door itself. All these parts can be the cause of a noisy garage door.
2 – The balance is off in your garage door assembly.
Over time, the stress of hauling the garage door up and down can cause the mechanism to run slightly askew and become off-balance. This can result in a noisy garage door that rattles excessively or has a louder rumbling noise when you push it up and down. An unbalanced door mechanism also slows the operation of the door.
The first thing to do when the door is off-balance is to tighten all bolts and screws in the mechanism. Calling in professional garage door experts to identify the true cause of the problem is a wise move. They can check the tension of any springs, and correctly identify damage to the chain or screw drive system or discover any warping of a wooden door.
3 – Failure to plan for quiet garage door use from the start.
Many doors are installed with metal rollers on a metal track and no buffers or bumpers on the edges or bottom of the door. While lubricating the wheels appropriately can help to minimize the sound a noisy garage door makes, replacing them with a nylon variety will reduce the noise more permanently.
Sometimes, excessive noise is caused by vibration at the point where the garage door opener motor or the mechanisms themselves are installed on the structure of your garage. This noise can be reduced by inserting narrow pieces of foam rubber between the mechanism and the building. Likewise, the door itself can be buffered at top and bottom to minimize the noise of a garage door.