# How Often Should a Commercial Garage Door Be Inspected? > The real numbers for commercial garage door inspection: annual technician service, quarterly powered-door checks, monthly safety-edge tests, per DASMA. - Canonical HTML: https://www.commercialgaragedoorman.ca/guides/commercial-door-inspection-frequency/ - Section: Home > Guides > How often should a commercial door be inspected? - Business: Commercial Garage Doorman, 6 Chestnut Dr, Grimsby, ON L3M 0C4, Canada - Phone: (905) 536-5369 | Email: info@garagedoorman.ca - Page updated: 2026-09-07 --- The industry answer has real numbers in it: a trained technician at least annually, a performance check on powered doors quarterly, a test of the safety edge monthly, and an immediate look at every door in the building after a windstorm or a flood. Here is where each of those comes from, and what your own staff can check between visits. Behind on inspections, or holding a door that failed one? We inspect, adjust and document commercial doors from Hamilton to Niagara. [Call (905) 536-5369](tel:+19055365369) ## What does the industry actually require? The Door & Access Systems Manufacturers’ Association is direct about the floor: **a trained door systems technician should perform periodic inspection and maintenance at least annually**: , or more often where the door manufacturer says so. That is the baseline for a door that runs normally, not one that has been hit, flooded or worked past its duty. Source: [DASMA Technical Data Sheet #270, Recommended Rolling Door Maintenance Practices for Building Maintenance Supervisors](https://www.dasma.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/TDS270.pdf) (PDF), Important Information item 4. Checked 7 September 2026. Annually is a floor, not a schedule. A receiving door running dozens of cycles a shift wears at a different rate to a plaza unit that opens twice a day, which is why maintenance programs here are set quarterly or semi-annually by how hard each door actually runs. ## Which checks are more often than annual? Three, and each has its own clock: - **Powered doors: quarterly.** DASMA’s guidance to building maintenance staff is to evaluate the performance of electric doors every quarter. The test it gives is simple: if the operator sounds like it is labouring, close the door, pull the manual disconnect, and try to lift it a foot or two by hand. If that takes real effort, the counterbalance needs service, and the motor has been covering for it. - **Safety edges: monthly.** A monitored safety edge, the kind that is allowed to serve as entrapment protection under ANSI/CAN/UL 325, should be checked and tested for proper operation monthly. - **After an event: immediately.** High wind, seismic activity or flooding calls for an immediate evaluation of every door system in the facility, regardless of when the last inspection was done. Sources: [DASMA TDS #270](https://www.dasma.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/TDS270.pdf) (PDF), Door Operation item 4 and Important Information item 2; [DASMA TDS #368, Edge Sensors](https://www.dasma.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/TDS368.pdf) (PDF), Principles. Checked 7 September 2026. ## What can your own staff check between visits? DASMA publishes a walk-around for facility managers and building superintendents, and it is worth running on a schedule of your own. From the floor, without touching the counterbalance: - **Hood:** no damage that could bind against the curtain. - **Guides:** fasteners in every slot and hole, tightened; the gap uniform top to bottom; nothing bent that binds the curtain or bottom bar. - **Curtain and bottom bar:** not bent, not rubbing the wall above the opening; endlocks and windlocks all present and tight; the sensing edge securely fastened. - **Balance:** closed, the door should rest on the floor or rise only slightly. Opening, it should advance toward the stops and sit there. A door that drifts or slams is out of balance. - **Labels:** the product safety labels present and readable. **The number worth writing down:** the force to open a chain-hoist door should not exceed **35 pounds on the hand chain**: , or **25 pounds on a crank**: . A door that needs significantly more than that has a counterbalance problem, and the fix belongs to a technician, not to a bigger pull. Sources: [DASMA TDS #269, Rolling Door Performance Evaluation by a Facility Manager or a Building Superintendent](https://www.dasma.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/TDS269-l.pdf) (PDF), Inspection and Performance Evaluation; [DASMA TDS #270](https://www.dasma.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/TDS270.pdf) (PDF), Door Operation item 3. Checked 7 September 2026. ## Why is the annual visit a technician-only job? Because the part that fails is the part that can hurt somebody. DASMA’s warning, printed on both of the sheets above, is that the counterbalance assembly is under extreme spring tension at all times, and that only a trained door systems technician with proper tools should make repairs and adjustments; severe injury or death can result otherwise. The same sheets say plainly: do not touch the tension wheel. If a spring needs adjusting, that is the call. There is one more rule your operators should know. Under UL 325, if a powered door has no working sensing edge or photo eyes, the close button must be held down constantly for the door to close at all. If one of your doors suddenly needs the button held, that is not a quirk: it is the operator telling you a safety device has dropped out, and the door is due for service. Sources: [DASMA TDS #269](https://www.dasma.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/TDS269-l.pdf) (PDF), Electric Operation; [DASMA TDS #270](https://www.dasma.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/TDS270.pdf) (PDF), Warning and Door Operation item 6. Checked 7 September 2026. ## What should the paperwork look like? An inspection that is not written down might as well not have happened, because the record is what an insurer, an auditor or a buyer asks for. Ours logs each door against the same checklist every visit: what was inspected, what was adjusted, what was replaced, and what is on watch for next time. That is the product a [planned maintenance program](https://www.commercialgaragedoorman.ca/services/planned-maintenance/) actually sells. ### Put every door on a schedule Tell us the site and roughly how many doors. We quote the program from a walk-through, and program customers get priority dispatch when something breaks anyway. [Call (905) 536-5369](tel:+19055365369) [How the program works](https://www.commercialgaragedoorman.ca/services/planned-maintenance/) ### Related - [What edge sensors must do](https://www.commercialgaragedoorman.ca/guides/commercial-door-safety-edges/) - [High-cycle spring conversions](https://www.commercialgaragedoorman.ca/services/high-cycle-spring-conversions/) - [24/7 emergency service](https://www.commercialgaragedoorman.ca/services/emergency-service/) - [All guides](https://www.commercialgaragedoorman.ca/guides/) --- Commercial Garage Doorman is the commercial division of Garage Doorman. Service line (905) 536-5369. 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