Roll Up Door Repair in Los Angeles

Forklifts, delivery trucks and reversing vans account for most of the roll up work we attend, and none of it is the door's fault. That curtain of interlocking steel slats winds onto a barrel above the opening rather than folding into sections, and it fronts a very large share of the storefronts, self storage units, parking structures and warehouses in this city. It is also a fundamentally different animal from a residential sectional door and needs different equipment.

We repair rolling steel doors, security grilles and counter shutters across Los Angeles, 24 hours a day.

Doors Out of Their Guides

This is the most common roll up fault by a wide margin, and in commercial settings it usually follows an impact. A forklift, a delivery truck, a reversing van or a shopping trolley clips the curtain or the guide and the slats jump out on one side, at which point the door jams part way and often crumples where it has been forced. Our technician releases tension safely, works the curtain back into the guides slat by slat, straightens or replaces the guide rail, and checks the barrel alignment, since a door that has come out once will do it again if the underlying geometry is off.

Slats, Bottom Bars and Curtains

Individual slats can be replaced without renewing the whole curtain, which is what makes these doors economical to keep. Bent, split or corroded slats are cut out and new ones threaded in, and the endlocks that keep the curtain from walking sideways in the guides are replaced at the same time, since they are usually what failed first. Bottom bars take the brunt of impacts and of prising during break in attempts and are straightened or replaced outright. Where a curtain is corroded across its whole area, which happens on doors near the port and along the coast, replacement is the honest answer and we will say so.

Barrel Springs Are Not Residential Springs

Inside the barrel above the door sits a spring assembly holding the entire weight of the curtain, and it is under considerably more tension than anything on a house. Adjusting or replacing it requires the right equipment, the right procedure and somebody who has done it before, and it is emphatically not a job for a building's maintenance staff. Symptoms of a failing barrel spring are a door that has become very heavy to lift manually, one that will not stay up, or an operator that has started straining and tripping its overload.

Operators, Chains and Safety Edges

Rolling doors are driven by jackshaft or hoist operators, often three phase in older industrial buildings, and backed up by a manual chain hoist for when power is out. We service all of it, including limit switches that have drifted, contactors that have burnt, brakes that no longer hold the door, seized chain hoists, and the safety edge along the bottom bar that stops the door on contact. Photo eyes and loop detectors on vehicle doors are covered as well.

Doors That Have Been Forced

Break in damage on a rolling door follows a pattern you learn to recognise. The bottom bar is levered upward at one corner until the curtain buckles, the endlocks tear out of the slats, and the guides are splayed where the bar went in. It looks total and very often is not. Individual slats are cut out and replaced, the bottom bar is straightened or renewed, the guides are drawn back true and fresh endlocks go on. Everything is photographed before it is touched, since an insurer will want that, and the opening is made secure the same night even where the full repair waits on parts.

Security Grilles and Counter Shutters

Scissor and straight lattice grilles across shopfronts in Downtown, the Fashion District and along the commercial corridors are the same family of product and we service them equally, including guides, locks, bottom bars and operators. Counter shutters over service windows, common in food premises and pharmacies, tend to fail on their guides and their springs and are usually a quick fix. Sectional commercial doors and industrial operators sit on our commercial garage door repair page. All of it is attended round the clock without an out of hours loading, priced before anybody starts, and where a door cannot be finished on the night the opening is secured before we leave. Shutters that jam outside trading hours are attended the same night, on the terms set out on our emergency garage door repair page.