Should You Repair or Replace Your Garage Door?
Repair when the sections are structurally sound and only wear parts have failed, which covers most situations. Replace when sections are rusted through or damaged beyond a matchable panel, when the garage is attached to living space and the door is uninsulated, or when the repair cost approaches half the price of a new door.
The default is repair
Most of the time, the thing that failed is a wear part. Springs, cables, rollers, hinges and bearings all have finite lives and all have standard replacements. None of them is a reason to buy a new door.
| Repair | Price |
|---|---|
| Spring replacement | $170 to $400 per spring |
| Cable repair | $100 to $350 |
| Roller set | $100 to $250 |
| Off-track correction | $150 to $700 |
| Section replacement | $250 to $800 |
| Opener replacement | $281 to $630 |
Against a new door at $1,056 to $4,620, repair usually wins on arithmetic alone.
The five cases where replacement is right
Sections are rusted through. Not surface rust, but corrosion through the steel, usually starting at the bottom section. Once the section has lost integrity there is nothing to repair.
A damaged panel cannot be matched. If the profile is discontinued, the honest options are a visible mismatch or a full replacement. On the front elevation of a house, most people choose replacement.
More than one section is damaged. At two sections you are usually past half the price of a new door.
The garage is attached and the door is uninsulated. The door is the largest uninsulated surface in that assembly. If you are spending money on it anyway, this is the moment to fix that.
The repair approaches half the price of a new door. A $700 repair on a fifteen year old door with original springs, cables and rollers is not a good buy.
The question people forget to ask
How old is everything else?
A twenty year old door that needs a spring is really a door where the spring, the cables, the rollers, the hinges and the bearings are all twenty years old. Replacing one of them starts a sequence.
That does not automatically mean replace. It means ask for the condition of the rest to be assessed and quoted at the same time, so you are comparing a real total against a new door rather than one line item.
When someone tells you to replace
Ask two things.
Which sections are damaged, and can you show me? A structural problem is visible. A recommendation you cannot see is a recommendation you cannot check.
What would the repair cost, if we did repair it? A company that will not give you the repair number alongside the replacement number is not helping you decide, it is selling.
What we would say
If the sections are sound, repair. It is worth several times less to us and it is the right answer.
If the sections are gone, replace, and choose insulated if the garage touches living space, because you will not be doing this again for twenty years.
Related questions
Is a twenty year old door worth repairing?
Often yes. Steel sectional doors from the 1990s and 2000s are frequently structurally fine, and springs, cables, rollers and hinges are all standard wear parts. Age alone is not the deciding factor; condition of the sections is.
How do I know if a panel can be matched?
The manufacturer has to still make that profile in that size. Larger manufacturers keep profiles in production longer. Colour is the harder match, because a door that has weathered ten years is not the colour it left the factory.
Does a company have an incentive to tell me to replace?
Yes, and it is worth being aware of. A replacement is worth several times a repair. That is exactly why a company that tells you to repair when repair is right is telling you something useful.