A scheduled route, not a call when it breaks
Commercial garage door preventive maintenance in Ottawa
A commercial door fails on a schedule you can predict, because springs and bearings wear by cycle count rather than by date. Preventive maintenance puts a technician in front of that door before the tenant calls you about it. HUSH runs maintenance routes for property managers, condo boards and shop owners across Ottawa and Gatineau.
What is a commercial preventive maintenance contract?
A contract is a scheduled route, not a repair call. We visit your doors on a set interval, inspect and adjust to a fixed list, and report what we found. You pay for planned work instead of emergencies.
Practically, it is four things written down. A door schedule that lists every opening by building, location, type, size and operator, so both sides know exactly what is covered. A visit frequency set per door rather than per property. A task list that says what happens on each visit, so the work does not shrink when the technician is busy. And a reporting format, so the visit produces a document rather than a memory.
What it is not is an insurance policy. A maintenance agreement covers inspection, adjustment, lubrication and small consumables. Parts and corrective repairs are separate, quoted from the report, and approved by you before anyone orders anything. Any contractor who tells a condo board that a flat fee covers a broken torsion spring on a sixteen foot door is either mispricing the work or planning to argue about it later.
How many maintenance visits a year does a commercial door need?
It depends on cycles, not on the calendar. A door opened a few times a day can run on one visit a year. A busy loading bay at fifty or more cycles a day wants quarterly attention.
Cycle count is the honest unit, because that is the unit the parts are rated in. A commercial torsion spring is specified at a cycle life, commonly in the range of 25,000 to 100,000 cycles depending on what was ordered, and one cycle is one open plus one close. Divide the rating by the real daily traffic and you get a working life in years rather than a guess. A condo garage entry door at eighty cycles a day and a rear shipping door at six cycles a day should not be on the same schedule, even when they are in the same building.
A rough starting frame, then we adjust it against your actual counts at the site visit. Light duty, under ten cycles a day, once a year. Medium, ten to thirty cycles, twice a year. Heavy, thirty to seventy five cycles, quarterly. Above that, or on a high speed door where a soft edge and a photo eye array are taking the abuse, monthly is not unusual. Environment moves a door up a tier on its own: road salt, grit, a door that faces the prevailing wind, a food or paint plant, an unheated bay where grease stiffens in January.
What gets checked and adjusted on a scheduled visit?
Springs, cables, drums, bearings, rollers, hinges, track alignment, the operator and every safety device. We measure door balance by hand, adjust limits and force, test the UL325 reversing devices, and lubricate to a written list.
The counterbalance comes first, because everything downstream is fighting it. We disengage the operator and lift the door by hand to check that it holds position at waist height instead of dropping or climbing, then look at the torsion springs for gapping and rust, the cables for a broken strand or a flat spot, the drums for grooving, and the end bearing plates and centre bearing for play and heat marks. On a rolling steel door the equivalent check is barrel tension, adjusted at the tension wheel, with the curtain at a known position.
Then the door itself: rollers spinning freely rather than sliding, hinges tight with no elongated fastener holes, section joints straight, struts unbent, track plumb and correctly spaced, jamb brackets and lag bolts tight into sound structure, and weather seals meeting the slab. Then the operator: duty cycle appropriate to the traffic it is actually seeing, chain or belt tension, sprocket and gearbox condition, brake and clutch adjustment, open and close limits, force settings, and on a three phase unit the rotation and the disconnect. Then the safety devices, which are the ones with a legal weight behind them: photo eyes aligned and clean, the UL325 sensing edge tested for a real reversal, the manual release working and labelled, and any monitored device confirmed to fail safe rather than fail open. Anything that cannot be adjusted into spec goes on the report as a quotable item instead of being pronounced fine.
Which failures does scheduled service catch before they close the door?
The slow ones. A frayed cable, a spring near the end of its cycle life, a bearing running dry, a drifting limit, a sensing edge that has failed, a fastener backing out of a hinge.
Almost every commercial door failure announces itself for weeks. A lift cable starts shedding strands at the drum long before it parts. A torsion spring gaps and rusts before it breaks. An end bearing squeals and blues before it seizes. A roller stem wears oval and the door starts to shudder before it climbs the track. A hinge fastener works loose in a section and the joint opens before the panel creases. Every one of those is a fifteen minute item on a scheduled visit and a closed door on a Tuesday morning if nobody looks.
The other half is the safety side, and it is the half that shows up in a claim. A photo eye knocked out of alignment by a pallet, a sensing edge whose cord has been pinched, an operator on a broken monitoring circuit, a manual release someone tied off because it kept dangling. A door that still opens and closes can be carrying all four of those at once, which is precisely why an operational door is not the same thing as an inspected door, and why the report matters more than the visit did.
What does a property manager receive in writing after each visit?
A dated report for each door: what was inspected, what was adjusted, cycle counts where the operator reports them, parts that are wearing, and anything that needs quoting. It files straight into your building records.
Each door on the schedule gets its own line rather than a single sheet for the property, because a condo board asking why the P2 entry door failed does not want a summary of eight other doors. The line carries the door identifier, the date, the technician, the balance and safety test results, what was adjusted, and a condition rating on the wearing parts so a board can see a spring moving from good to monitor to replace across three visits instead of hearing about it the day it breaks. Recommended work is priced separately and approved by you before it happens.
Two things go in the same file. Omar is the owner operator and a factory trained technician, and he is the person who attends, so the reports are consistent from visit to visit rather than written by whoever was free. HUSH carries commercial general liability insurance and WSIB coverage, and we will send both certificates for your vendor file before the first visit, naming the property where your policy requires it. Labour on corrective work is covered by the 90 day Done-Right guarantee, and you can read how the 90 day Done-Right guarantee applies to scheduled work before you sign anything.
Can one contract cover doors across several buildings?
Yes. One agreement, one door schedule, one route. Each building keeps its own visit and its own report, and you get a single point of contact instead of eight service histories in eight places.
This is the normal case for a property management portfolio, and it is where the arithmetic starts working for you rather than against you. Doors clustered geographically are attended in one run, so the travel that a single call would carry gets shared. Mixed door types across a portfolio are fine, and common: sectional steel on the loading side, a rolling steel door on the lane, a rolling shutter on the retail frontage, and a gear head or jackshaft operator on whichever of them is powered. Each gets its own task list and its own frequency.
What we need from you to price it is a door count and an address list, and access arrangements for anything behind a gate or a fob. What you get back is a written schedule and a written price after the site visit, because a portfolio number quoted over the phone is a number someone is going to have to revise. Between scheduled visits, a breakdown call runs on the same terms as any other: the service call is $35 to $85 and it is waived on a repair over $250, with no overtime fee whatever time you ring. We run routes across the Ottawa and Gatineau buildings we put on a route.
Put the doors on a schedule before the schedule puts itself
Send us a door count and an address list and we will walk the property, then quote the maintenance schedule in writing. Between visits, a breakdown call is $35 to $85 and it is waived on any repair over $250. No overtime fees, ever.
Book the site visit- Every major brand serviced
- Factory-trained
- Insured and WSIB-covered
Same-day service
We carry the common springs, cables, rollers and opener parts on every truck, so most repairs are one visit.
A written price before we start
You get a firm price, quoted before we start and never after, and there is no overtime fee at night or on a weekend.
Guaranteed work
Every repair is backed by our written 90-day Done-Right Promise, parts and labour included.
Factory-trained and owner-operated
factory-trained, owner-operated, and servicing every major garage door and opener brand.
Free estimate, and the service call is free with any repair over $250. Ask about financing on approved credit.
From call to fixed, in 4 steps
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Call or book
Tell us what is happening. We give you a real arrival window.
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We diagnose on-site
A technician inspects and shows you exactly what is wrong.
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You get a firm quote
We price the fix and walk you through your options, before any work.
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We fix it, you test it
Most repairs done the same visit, backed by our 90-day promise.
HUSH guarantees its labour for 90 days
The Done-Right Promise covers our labour for 90 days on every repair. If the work is not right, we come back and fix it free. Premium parts carry their own manufacturer warranty.
We can promise this because most of our repairs are done right on the first visit, so callbacks are rare. On the rare one, fixing it is on us, never you.
Managing doors across a portfolio?
We walk the property, build the door schedule, and quote the maintenance route in writing before anything starts.
Same-day, 7 days a week. Open daily, 7am to 9pm.