48 questions we get every week

The most common cause is a broken torsion spring, which usually announces itself with a loud bang and leaves a door far too heavy to lift by hand. Other frequent causes are a snapped lift cable, a door off its track, misaligned safety sensors, or a stripped opener gear. Here is how to tell them apart. With the door closed, pull the emergency release and lift by hand. Heavy or immovable means springs or cables. Light and smooth means the fault is in the opener.

Yes. Professional Garage Concepts books same-day garage door repair across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, and doors that will not open, will not close, or have come off track go to the front of the schedule. Call (817) 538-7668. Our trucks carry springs, cables, drums, rollers, hinges and LiftMaster parts, so the large majority of repairs finish in a single visit.

Yes. We run 24/7 emergency garage door service in Dallas-Fort Worth. A door stuck open leaves your house and everything in the garage exposed, and a door stuck closed can trap the car you need in the morning. Those are the calls we take at night and on weekends at (817) 538-7668.

Most residential garage door repairs finish in 60 to 120 minutes on site. Spring replacement runs 60 to 90 minutes, cable repair is usually under an hour, and an off-track door takes one to two hours depending on whether the track bent or a panel creased. Opener replacement takes about two hours including programming remotes and setting the safety reverse.

A standard 10,000 cycle torsion spring lasts about seven years in a home that opens the door four times a day, since one cycle is one open plus one close. Families that use the garage as their main entrance can run six to ten cycles daily and see the same spring fail in three or four years. North Texas heat and humidity swings shorten that further, which is why 20,000 and 30,000 cycle springs are a reasonable upgrade here.

Torsion springs mount on a shaft above the door opening and store energy by twisting, lifting the door evenly through cables and drums. Extension springs run along the horizontal tracks beside the door and store energy by stretching. Torsion is standard on modern and double doors, balances better and fails more safely. Extension springs cost less and are still found on older single doors, but they must have safety containment cables running through them.

Both springs were installed the same day and have run the identical number of cycles, so when one reaches the end of its fatigue life the other is weeks behind, not years. Mixing a new spring with a worn one also leaves the door out of balance, which strains the opener and shortens the life of the new spring. The second spring costs the part price only, because the trip and the labor are already covered. Replacing it separately in eight months costs the entire job again.

No. A wound torsion spring on a double door stores enough energy to lift a 200 pound door, and it is released through winding bars a quarter turn at a time. A bar that slips out of the cone comes around at head height, and loosening set screws in the wrong order drops the door. Sizing is the second problem. Springs must match measured door weight, wire diameter, coil diameter, length, wind direction and drum size, and a near-miss spring quietly destroys the opener.

Yes. Professional Garage Concepts installs and repairs LiftMaster and Chamberlain garage door openers across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, including belt drive, chain drive and wall-mount jackshaft units. Installation runs $150 to $350 in DFW, or $100 to $300 to connect an opener to a new door. We carry LiftMaster parts on the trucks, so most repairs finish in one visit.

You need one if anyone in the house forgets to close the door, if you let contractors, cleaners or deliveries in while you are out, or if the garage is your main entrance. A myQ-equipped opener shows the door's status in an app, opens and closes it from anywhere, and alerts you when it has been left open. Basic app control comes with the opener. Some third-party integrations carry a subscription, and we tell you which before you buy.

Start with the battery, which is the cause well over half the time, then check whether the wall button still operates the door. If the wall button works and the remote does not, the remote has lost its programming or failed. If neither works, the problem is at the opener or its power. If the remote works up close but not from the driveway, the antenna wire hanging from the head unit is damaged or tucked up.

Choose belt drive for an attached garage, especially one with a bedroom or bonus room above it. A steel-reinforced rubber belt runs far quieter than a metal chain and is the upgrade most homeowners say they would make again. Choose chain drive for a detached garage, shop or barn, where the noise costs you nothing and the lower price is real. Both carry the same safety systems and both can be had with battery backup and myQ.

A new garage door installed in DFW costs $2,000 to $10,000 or more for a single door and $3,500 to $20,000 or more for a double, with the typical DFW double-door job landing near $4,500. Insulation adds $500 to $1,000 for polystyrene or $1,000 and up for polyurethane. Material, glass, hardware and wind rating drive the rest.

A single-door replacement takes three to four hours and a standard double takes four to six hours, so nearly every residential installation finishes in one day. Two doors at one house is a full day. Custom, oversized and wind-rated doors can take longer because of the additional bracing and jamb anchoring involved.

Yes, removal and disposal of the old door, track, springs, cables and hardware is included in every installation we quote, and all of it leaves on our truck the same day. Confirm this with any contractor you compare, because some price removal separately and a few leave the debris on site.

Yes, new springs are part of every correct installation, because springs are sized to the finished weight of the specific door and a new insulated door can weigh 80 pounds more than the single-layer door it replaced. Reusing old springs leaves the door out of balance, overloads the opener, and typically causes a failure within a year or two.

Yes. Polished concrete is one of the best floors for Dallas heat because there is no film to soften, blister or lift. A slab hitting 100 degrees in an uncooled DFW garage or warehouse does not affect the finish, and the slab's thermal mass keeps the floor cooler than the air.

It is also the reason hot tire pickup, the common complaint about cheap garage coatings in Texas, is not a polished concrete problem at all.

Polished concrete in Dallas runs $3.50 to $12.00 per square foot installed, depending on aggregate exposure and floor size. Cream polish is $3.50 to $6.00, salt and pepper runs from $3.50 on large floors to near $9.00 on small ones, and rock cut full aggregate exposure is $9.50 to $12.00.

Size drives the number harder than the finish does. Very large commercial floors can reach $1.00 to $3.50 per square foot.

Polished concrete is not inherently slippery, and a properly polished floor typically tests at or above the slip resistance of polished stone or tile. Wet is a different question. Any hard smooth floor is slick with water or fine tracked-in soil on it, and Dallas entries collect both during a storm.

The practical fix is entry matting and a cleaning routine. Where wet exposure is constant, we specify a lower gloss level or add a traction treatment instead.

Very well, which is why national retail and distribution operators specify it. Because the wear surface is the concrete slab itself, there is no coating to wear through in traffic lanes, and a densified polished floor in a busy Dallas retail entry will typically outlast any coating put in the same location.

The wear you will see is loss of gloss over years, not failure. Burnishing brings it back without replacing anything.

Basic concrete staining in Dallas runs $2 to $4 per square foot installed, including prep, a single stain color and a sealer. Adding a saw cut pattern brings it to $3 to $5 per square foot on top of that, and custom designs, borders or logos run $5 to $15 per square foot depending on complexity.

Stain combined with mechanical polishing runs $4.50 to $10 per square foot and is the most durable version of a colored concrete floor.

Acid stain chemically reacts with the lime in the slab to create permanent, variable, mottled earth tones that cannot fade or peel. Water-based dye is fine pigment carried into the concrete's pores, which gives a much wider color range including grays and blacks and lays down far more evenly.

Acid stain is UV stable and works outdoors. Most dyes are not, so dye is generally an interior product in Texas sun.

No. Acid stain is translucent, so cracks, patches, trowel marks, old adhesive residue and oil spots all show through, and in many cases stain makes them more visible rather than less. Anything already in your slab will still be there under the color.

If the slab is damaged, the honest options are repairing it first, polishing it, or covering it with an opaque flake or epoxy coating.

Yes, when it is acid stain protected by the right sealer. Acid stain is UV stable and will not fade in Texas sun, which is why exterior DFW patios and pool decks get reactive stain rather than dye. The sealer is the part that wears, not the color.

We usually specify a penetrating sealer or a low-build UV stable film outdoors, because a heavy film on an exterior slab can trap moisture and cloud.