The motor ran, the chain moved, and the door stayed on the ground. That combination almost always means the counterbalance has failed, and on most Franklin doors that is a torsion spring on the shaft above the opening. Plenty of people hear it go: a single bang from the garage overnight, loud enough to be mistaken for something falling off a shelf, followed by a door that will not lift in the morning.
Confirming it with a torch and nothing else
Stand inside, light on, and look along the steel shaft that runs above the door. A wound spring is a continuous coil. A broken one shows a clean break of one to two inches with the two cut ends sitting apart, and those ends are often splayed slightly out of line. That is the entire inspection. Keep your hands away from the winding cones, leave the lift cables alone, and resist the urge to test the theory by hauling on the door. Nothing is counterbalancing it now, and an insulated double section door can be north of two hundred pounds sitting there waiting.
Extension springs on the Grassland and Temple Hills vintage
Not every door here is a torsion door. The 1970s and 1980s houses through Grassland, Temple Hills and the older Hillsboro Road corridor are the one part of this market where extension springs still turn up in numbers, stretched along the horizontal track on each side rather than wound on a shaft. When one of those lets go it goes limp and hangs loose in the track while its partner stays stretched tight. Look for the containment cable threaded through the middle of each spring while you are at it, because on that vintage it is often missing. That cable is what keeps a failing spring from leaving the wall, and an extension pair fitted with containment is an estimated $155 to $275.
Why it went on the first cold morning
A spring's life is counted in openings rather than in years. Builders fit a ten thousand cycle spring as standard, and a household using the door four or five times a day gets through that stock in something like seven to twelve years. Middle Tennessee winters cross freezing and come back repeatedly rather than settling into a long freeze, and it is nearly always one of those first genuinely cold mornings that finds a tired spring. Cold steel is stiffer, the grease film has thickened, and if the bottom seal has bonded to a frosted slab the door asks for more at the exact moment the spring has least left to give. The cold is the trigger. The cycle count was the cause, and it was spent months earlier.
Unplug it and use the side door
This is the step people skip and then pay for. With the counterbalance gone the motor is lifting the whole door on a nylon drive gear designed to move a balanced one. Two or three more attempts is how a spring job becomes a spring and opener job. Pull the plug at the ceiling socket so nobody in the house presses the button out of habit. If the door is down, leave it down. If it is stuck part way up, do not park under it and do not walk under it.
Other reasons a door will not lift
- No power. A tripped outlet or a loose lampholder adapter. The motor light answers that in a second.
- Vacation or lock mode set on the wall console. It blocks travel and stops the handsets working until the button is held down for a few seconds.
- A broken lift cable. The door usually ends up skewed in the opening rather than sitting still and refusing.
- Off track. A roller out of its track binds the door and stalls the motor, which is off-track repair rather than a spring.
- A sheared drive gear. The motor hums, the sprocket sits still, and there is plastic swarf under the housing.
What the replacement involves and what it costs
The door gets clamped to the track first, then whatever tension is left in the shaft is bled off with a pair of proper winding bars. Four measurements come off the old spring: wire gauge, inside diameter, relaxed length, and which way it was wound. Those figures, read against what the door actually weighs, decide the replacement. Winding is done to a calculated number of turns, the balance is then proved with the opener still disconnected, and the travel limits and force are set last, to the door as it moves that day.
Fitting one torsion spring is an estimated $185 to $345. Two springs on a double door, done together, is an estimated $265 to $450, and doing both at once is the sensible call because the survivor has taken the same cycles in the same damp garage. A high-cycle upgrade adds an estimated $60 to $120 more per spring and roughly doubles the service life, which pays for itself on a door in Brentwood or Cool Springs that gets used as the family's front door. Guide figures, not a quote.