Guide

The Free 21-Point Inspection, Point by Point

Published September 30, 2026

The inspection is free, takes about twenty minutes, and covers twenty-one specific points across six groups: springs, cables and drums, hardware, track, the door itself, and the opener and its safety systems. You get the written findings at the end whether or not anything needs fixing — including the parts that are fine. This guide walks through what each group is actually looking for, so you know what was checked and why it matters.

Why publish the list at all

Most free inspections in this trade are a sales call with a clipboard. The technician looks at the door, finds a problem, and quotes a repair. Nothing is written down, and you have no way of knowing what was actually examined.

Publishing the whole list changes what the visit is. If you can read the twenty-one points before we arrive, you can ask about any of them, and you can check that the written findings you receive actually cover them. It also means we have to tell you what is fine, not only what is broken — which is the part that makes the report worth having.

The groups below follow the order the inspection is actually done in, which runs from the parts under the most tension to the parts under the least.

Hardware, track and the door — the parts that wear

Six points cover hardware: hinges, rollers, bearings, the bottom brackets, the fasteners holding it all together, and the shaft the springs sit on. This is the largest group because it is where most of the moving parts are, and where the majority of noise complaints originate.

Three points cover the track — alignment, mounting and condition. Track problems rarely announce themselves. A door that binds slightly on the way up is the opener working harder than it should, and that shows up later as a burned-out opener rather than as a track complaint.

Two points cover the door itself: the sections and panels, and the weather seal at the bottom. On a Cincinnati door the bottom section and its seal do the hardest work, because that is the zone that sits in salt, meltwater and road spray all winter.

What you get at the end

Written findings covering all twenty-one points, including the ones that passed. There is no charge for the visit or the inspection, and no obligation to book any work that comes out of it.

If something does need fixing, you get told what, why, and what happens if it waits — and the honest answer is sometimes that it can wait. A worn roller is a different conversation from a corroded bottom bracket, and the report should make that difference clear rather than flattening everything into one quote.

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