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Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

The reason it's not expensive to have someone else do it is that if done properly it's not dangerous. Otherwise culture would be lumping garage door repairmen with emergency responders who take dangerous jobs but keep society functioning. You couldn't get it done for $200 if the career killed people frequently.

The "if done properly" is critical, yes, if done wrong it's incredibly dangerous, but if you understand and respect it there's minimal chance of harm.

DIYed it three times now (on different doors of course) without incident.

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On what planet do you live where dangerousness of work has anything to do with pay?

EMTs, who are basically doing the bulk of "saving people's lives" - are paid the lowest wages, worse than firefighters, police, and often even the dispatchers. Why? Because the market is totally saturated with former armed services folks. And in many states, assaulting a cop will get you in a fuckton of trouble, assaulting a firefighter will get you in a fair bit of trouble, but assaulting an EMT will (depending on the state) often get you...an ambulance ride, which you were probably getting anyway.

Retail workers, transportation workers, field workers...all very dangerous jobs and bottom-barrel pay. Same for people in meat processing; just look up the articles about migrant children working in meat packing plants (or don't if you have kids, because there are some incredibly horrific things happening to them.)

Yeah. Pizza delivery is surprisingly dangerous and they're paid very little.

Then again, underwater welding and helicopter chainsaw pilot pays quite well.

So sometimes it does, but it's not correlated.

if you know it well enough to keep yourself safe then I'd usually say yes. The thing that differs between say... dealing with residential mains power vs spring is I can measure and have quite a bit of trust in materials used. springs I just don't know enough, if it's of good material, metal fatigue? and a mishap means a good chance of disablement. I just don't like springs. Same thing with car suspension and those spring clamps? No SIR.

Famous last words.

That makes no sense.

I'm with OP. You don't see mass casualties among overhead door installation crews. So, there must be a safe way to do it.

I've also installed around 6 overhead doors, and followed all safety instructions that I learned from an overhead door installer. I've never once been killed.

It’s the arrogance that kills. Not the spring.

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