Spring repair in Cottonwood Heights, Utah

Cottonwood Heights sits at roughly 4,593 feet, and the 93.8 annual freeze–thaw crossings that come with that elevation fatigue spring steel independently of how often the door runs. Each crossing contracts and expands the coil; the damage accumulates whether the door cycles twice a day or ten times.

There is a second cold effect: freezing temperatures make spring steel more brittle, so the fatigued spring picks the coldest lift of the day to fail. With 91% of Cottonwood Heights's freeze–thaw days packed into November through March, the failure season is not a mystery.

This is mature housing — half the homes in Cottonwood Heights were standing by 1974 — so most garages have replaced springs once or twice already. A never-replaced set here is living on borrowed time well past the local 5–7 years.

The 25,000-cycle upgrade adds $80 to $150 to a replacement and multiplies expected life by roughly 2.5. At Cottonwood Heights's 93.8 cycles a year of thermal fatigue, that arithmetic tilts firmly toward the upgrade — it converts a 5-to-7-year spring into one that outlasts most ownerships, and it avoids paying the call-out twice.

Fit them as a matched pair, sized to the door's measured weight — in this climate an undersized bargain spring is the shortest-lived spring of all.

The measurements shift town by town: Holladay runs 89.4 freeze–thaw cycles and 5–7 years of spring life; Sandy runs 93.1 freeze–thaw cycles and 5–7 years of spring life; and Millcreek runs 88.2 freeze–thaw cycles and 5–7 years of spring life.

This page runs on Cottonwood Heights's numbers (93.8 freeze–thaw cycles, 1974 median build, 4,593 ft of elevation) — close to the neighbours', never identical, which is exactly the point of measuring per city.