How Long It Takes
A straight spring swap on a standard double door is usually a two-to-three-hour job once we're on site, torsion or extension. Where it runs longer is when the drum, bearing plate, or track brackets have worn alongside the spring, which happens more often on doors that have been cycling since the mid-1970s than on anything installed in the last decade. We don't guess at this over the phone. A tech needs to see the hardware, because a door built when Hollins was still filling in with new construction may have a bracket pattern or a headroom clearance that a newer kit doesn't match without adapting. If parts have to be sourced because the original track or hinge gauge isn't something we carry on the truck, that adds a day, sometimes two.
Stocked Parts
We carry common torsion and extension spring sizes, standard cable, rollers, and hinges that fit the bulk of what's on Hollins garage doors today - mostly steel sectional doors installed or replaced sometime after the original 1970s build. What we don't always have on the truck is hardware sized for an original door that's never been swapped out: older jamb brackets, non-standard track widths, or the lighter-gauge springs that were typical before manufacturers moved to today's cycle-rated torsion springs. On those jobs we're honest about it upfront - if it's a part we need to order, we'll tell you the day we look at it, not after we've already started pulling the old spring.
The Complications
The complication isn't usually the spring itself - it's what's attached to it. On a door that's original or close to original from the 1960s-70s building wave common across this part of the valley, we sometimes find a torsion bar mounted on wood jambs that have shifted slightly over fifty years, which throws the whole alignment off even after a clean spring replacement. Extension spring setups from that era frequently lack the safety containment cables that became standard practice later, and we won't leave a job without adding them even if the customer only asked for the spring. That's not an upsell - a spring under tension with no containment cable is a hazard, full stop.
How We Fix It
We come out from Roanoke, about four miles to most of Hollins, carrying the parts that cover the majority of calls we get from this area. On arrival we check the spring, the drums, the cables, and the track alignment together rather than just replacing the obvious broken part, because on a door this age a spring failure is often the symptom of a worn bearing plate or a bent track that caused uneven load in the first place. If the door itself is failing - rusted panels, delaminating wood, a frame that's racked - we'll say so plainly. Replacing a fifty-year-old door is sometimes the honest answer, not another repair that buys six months.
