What Changes With the Season
Most houses in this area were built between 1940 and 2015
With the median landing around 1981, and a lot of the stock in the 49 named neighborhoods around here clusters in the 1980s and 90s. That matters because doors and openers installed when those houses were built are now thirty-plus years old if they've never been swapped out. A torsion spring rated for 10,000 cycles doesn't care what year it is, but a house built in 1983 has had a lot more winters to work that spring loose, rust its coils, or dry out the lubrication nobody re-applies after the builder leaves.
Cold swings are the other half of it
This area sits in a cold-severe climate band, which means the metal on a steel door panel contracts in a hard freeze and expands again on the next warm afternoon. That cycle is what pops loose weather seals and draughts along the bottom of the door, and it's what tightens up a track that was installed slightly out of plumb to begin with. None of this is dramatic. It's slow wear, and it shows up as a door that gets noisier, heavier to lift by hand, or a half-inch out of square at the bottom corner.
