Serving Dallas, TX
Proudly Serving Dallas & Surrounding Counties
Family Owned & Operated
Support Local! We're Committed to Providing Exceptional Service
Proudly Serving Dallas & Surrounding Counties
Support Local! We're Committed to Providing Exceptional Service
Garland’s houses are old by metroplex standards. The median one was built in 1978 and more than half went up before 1980, so the typical Garland garage door has seen decades of daily use and at least one round of replacement parts. We repair all of it on every brand: springs, cables, rollers, sections, openers, sensors and remotes.
Suburban Garage Door is family owned and has been fixing garage doors since 1992. You get the price before any work starts, no hidden fees, and a straight answer about whether your door needs a repair or something bigger. The office is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
A stuck door usually comes down to one of a handful of problems, and a few of them get worse every time someone presses the button. While you wait for us:
When you call, describe the sound and where the door stopped; it tells us which parts to bring. Urgent weekday calls made between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. can get same-day help, with an after-hours call-out fee. Our emergency garage door service page has the details.
Federal law has required every garage door opener made since January 1, 1993 to carry entrapment protection. In practice that means the two small photo eyes near the floor that send the door back up when something crosses the beam. Openers made before that date were never required to have them.
The median house here was fifteen years old when that rule took effect. If the opener that came with a 1970s house, or one fitted during the 1980s, is still on the ceiling, it was built without photo eyes. Most of those have been replaced by now. Some haven’t, and they tend to hang in garages where the door still opens fine and nobody has had a reason to look up.
When we find one, we’ll tell you plainly, test what safety reversal it does have, and give you the cost of a new opener next to the cost of keeping the old one running. The decision is yours. We just want you making it with a clear picture of what the old unit can and can’t do.
Garland built its housing over a long stretch rather than in one burst. The 1970s alone account for more than a quarter of the homes standing today, and the three decades from 1960 through 1989 produced close to two thirds of them. Doors in service that long have seldom kept all of their original parts.
What we tend to find is a mix, such as a replacement door hung on the original track, running on springs a previous owner swapped years ago. Torsion springs, the coiled springs on the bar above the door that carry its weight, are rated in cycles rather than years, and one cycle is one open plus one close. A spring chosen for a light original door can be badly undersized for the heavier insulated door that replaced it. The opener strains against it and the spring wears out early. A door that drifts down when you stop it halfway is the usual sign.
So on an older Garland door we check the balance and size the new springs to the door that’s actually hanging there, which may not be the door the old springs were picked for. That takes a few extra minutes on the visit.
Most of North Texas sits on deep clay that swells when it’s wet and shrinks when it dries. Garland has plenty of it. Roughly a quarter of the city, mostly in the west, also has a much thinner layer of soil over rock, in places only about 6 inches deep according to federal soil survey data. Garland also has more than twice the elevation change of Rowlett, roughly 200 feet from the low ground along its eastern edge to the high ground in the northwest.
The soil data stops there, and the rest is how we read it. A slab on shallow soil over rock tends to stay put, while one on deep clay elsewhere in the city can shift enough between a wet spring and a dry August to pull a garage opening slightly out of square. On a sloped lot, the garage floor may not be level from one side to the other, so a door hung perfectly square seals on one end and shows daylight on the other.
When a Garland door rubs, binds or leaves a gap under one corner, we look at the opening and the floor before we blame the door. The fix is often a track adjustment or a new bottom seal shaped to the floor. Neither one calls for a new door.
On December 26, 2015, a tornado that began in Sunnyvale cut a 13-mile path through Garland and on into Rowlett. The National Weather Service rated it EF4, recorded the EF4 damage in Garland, and estimated its peak winds at 170 to 180 mph. The National Weather Service’s account of the December 2015 tornadoes carries the full survey.
It wasn’t the city’s only tornado. On October 20, 2019, a separate EF2 touched down inside Garland, tearing into warehouses and throwing debris into nearby homes, though no one was hurt.
Hail comes more often. Federal storm records hold more than 30 Garland reports of hail an inch or larger, spread across 24 separate days, and on September 24, 2023, stones over two inches across were reported in the city.
Storm damage to a garage door doesn’t always show right away. A bowed section or a bent run of track will usually keep working for a while, and the strain turns up weeks or months later as worn rollers or a frayed cable. After a storm, look at the door from inside the garage: panels that bow inward, rollers sitting crooked in the track, a door that sounds different than it did. Any of those is worth a visit while it’s still a small repair.
Garland is a city of owners and renters both. About 62 percent of occupied homes are lived in by their owners, and more than a quarter of all housing units are in multifamily buildings, from duplexes and fourplexes up to large complexes.
That mix shapes who calls us. Alongside homeowners, we hear from landlords about rental houses and from property managers about the garages at apartment and townhome communities, where many residential doors and openers share one budget and one maintenance schedule.
We set up accounts with property managers for that work. What decides whether a job is ours is the door itself: residential sectional doors and the openers that run them, whether they’re on a house or a complex. Roll-up commercial doors and oversized doors belong with a commercial door company. For a rental, tell us who approves the work and who will be at the property, and we’ll keep both in the loop.
On older Garland doors the repairs we see most are worn rollers, frayed lift cables, bent or loose track, cracked hinges, a section pulling apart at the seam, and bottom seals that have dried out and split. Each of those is a repair, and none of them by itself is a reason to replace a door. Our garage door repair service covers every brand of door, old and new.
If a door has another decade in it with the right repair, that’s what we’ll recommend, even when you called expecting to hear you need a new one.
“Ben quickly fixed bent rails and door panel. He adjusted and balanced spring and door, which operates very smooth now!”
Matt A., on Google
A broken spring is one of the most common reasons a door stops dead. You’ll usually hear it go, a sharp bang from the garage, and the door will be too heavy to lift or the opener will strain and quit after a few inches.
Spring life is easy to estimate. Take the spring’s cycle rating and divide it by your household’s daily trips: a family that runs the door six times a day uses up a 10,000-cycle spring in under five years. On a house where the springs have been replaced once already, the useful question is when they were last done, not how old the house is. Our broken spring repair service replaces both springs on a two-spring door, since the one that didn’t break has the same cycles on it.
Some older doors still run on extension springs, the long springs that stretch along the horizontal track on each side. Those should have a safety cable threaded through them to contain a spring that breaks, and we check for one on every extension-spring door we work on.
An opener that runs but won’t finish the job usually needs one part. We look first at the gear inside the motor housing, the limit settings that tell it where to stop, the circuit board, and the alignment of the photo eyes. Our garage door opener repair service works on all brands, and we check the simplest fixes first.
“The straight up honesty, professionalism and workmanship was outstanding.”
Gary G., on Google
When a motor or board is truly finished, or an opener predates photo eyes altogether, we handle garage door opener installation, mostly LiftMaster. Belt-drive units run much quieter than older chain drives, and many models connect to Wi-Fi so you can check the door from your phone. Before we leave, we program your remotes and any keypad you want by the door.
On a door hung in the 1970s, the honest answer is sometimes a new one. Steel that has rusted through at the bottom edge, wood that has softened, or several sections cracked from years of use are signs we point out on the spot. If we recommend replacement, our garage door installation crew measures the opening, removes the old door and springs, and leaves the new one balanced and running.
Garland leaves most of the choice to you. The city has no design review board for single-family homes and no masonry requirement, so City Hall isn’t choosing your door’s style or color. Where a neighborhood association exists, its guidelines are the ones to read before ordering. A city rule on where a garage door can sit is covered in the questions below.
You can browse the styles we install on our new garage doors page. We’ll help you match the door to the house and the block, and we won’t push a pricier door than the job calls for.
A classic style with a distinctive design.
An original style with endless options.
A traditional look with a modern construction.
Older doors get the most out of a yearly tune-up, because the small problems on a 40-year-old door are the ones that turn into a broken cable or a bent section. A garage door maintenance visit covers the opener’s safety devices, the balance and springs, cables and rollers, track alignment, and lubrication of the moving parts with a food-grade lubricant.
On a Garland house it’s also the visit where we look at how the door meets the floor and the opening, and whether the opener has photo eyes at all. Before we leave, we’ll tell you what needs attention now, if anything, and what can wait.
“Ben did such a great job balancing and lubricating after his repair that now my door is quieter…”
Lisa F., on Google
Nicola or Nicole will usually be the one who answers. Tell them what the door is doing, what you heard, and roughly when the house was built. On an older Garland home, that last detail helps us bring the right parts on the first trip.
You get a two-hour service window, not a whole day. Ben or Neil, our senior technicians, or another member of our team will look at the whole door rather than only the part that failed, and explain what went wrong and why. The price comes before the work. If something else turns up once the door is apart, we stop and talk to you before touching it. Current discounts live on our coupons page.
We’re adding or converting a garage. Where can the door go?
Garland’s development code sets a citywide rule for garage placement. The face of a garage door has to sit at least 20 feet from the street or alley right-of-way line it faces, and the garage has to use one of four layouts: rear entry, a J drive, a swing drive for a side-entry garage, or front entry set back at least 5 feet behind the front face of the house. Replacing the door in an existing opening leaves the door where it was. Adding a garage, converting one or turning it to face a new direction is where this rule matters, so check with the city’s planning staff before you settle on a design.
Our house was rebuilt after the 2015 tornado. Is the door due for anything?
If the door and springs went in during the rebuilding that followed, they’re about ten years into service now. That’s a sensible point for a full check of the springs, cables and opener, and on a busy household’s door the springs may be at or past their rated cycles.
Is it worth repairing a garage door that’s 40 years old?
Often, yes. A steel door with sound sections can keep going for years with new rollers, cables and springs. It stops being worth it when the sections themselves are rusted through, cracked or rotted, or when the door is so heavy that keeping it balanced is a constant job. We’ll be straight with you about which side of that line your door is on.
Our 1970s house still has the opener that came with it. Does it need replacing?
Check the bottom of the door frame first. If there’s no small sensor on each side a few inches off the floor, the opener was built before photo eyes were required, and we’ll recommend a new one. If the sensors are there and it runs smoothly, an older opener can keep working, and we’ll tell you which parts are wearing.
These pages carry the same kind of local detail for neighboring cities:
The rest of the area we serve is on our service areas page.
A door that’s noisy, slow or out of balance is a simpler fix now than after a cable lets go. Call during office hours and Nicola or Nicole will find you a two-hour window.
Call: (972) 414-6900
