HELP! I need a new Industrial / Commercial Door or Shutter- Where do I start?

Below you will find some basic information to help you decide what product best suits your requirement.

What is your primary reason for procuring a new door?

REPLACEMENT DOORS

NEW BUILDING BEING BUILT

AUTOMATION

UPGRADE SECURITY

UPGRADE INSULATION OR NOISE RECUCTION

REPLACEMENT DOORS - A lot of our customers tend to look at replacing an old or damaged door with a something very similar, or the same as they had already – Whilst there may be constraints, it should be regarded as an opportunity to upgrade the door, sometimes at little or no extra cost over a direct replacement. This may be better insulation, automation, better aesthetics or just something less noisy! 

If you have a design or style in mind, or even if you are undecided at the moment, the following needs to be considered:

Will it fit? Our experts will advise on this. It is our responsibility to ensure the product you have in mind fits in to the building correctly. Constraints such as coil size, track trajectory, headroom and side room sometimes preclude the use or certain designs.

How will it Operate? You need to decide whether simple push button operation is sufficient, or whether the door needs to have additional controls. Please note many styles of door are now unavailable as manually operated doors.

How often will the door be used? To enable us to specify and offer you the correct product, it is important to think about the number of cycles the new door will have to perform in a given period. This will ensure a reasonable useful life of the product. A number of doors we replace are worn out because they are being used outside of the design envelope.

Insulation – If your building is heated, may be heated in the future, you are renting out the building, or you are storing products susceptible to damage by temperature or moisture swings, you should consider using an insulated door.

Who will operate the door? This aspect is important, especially with regards to automatic doors, or doors remotely controlled doors. The specification of your new door may have to change depending on whether the door is operated by trained users, untrained users or the general public.

Safety? Can the door you have in mind be operated safely in the environment it is being fitted into, in the way you would like to operate it? We will advise on this.

Wind Loading? Can the new door offer adequate wind load resistance, based on the aspect or location of the opening. You, as the customer, can help our advisors specify an appropriate product, as you will know your site better than us. The larger the door area, the more important this aspect becomes. All manufacturers have tested size parameters, outside of which a certain style of door cannot be offered.

Water ingress - It is important to consider how rainwater can be moved away from the door face on an external door, an area often overlooked. If this aspect is considered at the design stage, it can save a lot of effort trying to overcome the problem, if water ingress is discovered later. We will advise on the best methods to overcome this issue. It is not enough to simply fit a rubber seal to the base of the door – a good floor design is the only way to prevent water ingress.

Aesthetics? How would you like the door to look? Does it need to match other doors or parts of the building? Colour choice can have a big impact on final cost on a lot of products, so it is best to stick with standard colours where possible. Different products have different standard colour offerings.

Access?  Can the entire door structure be accessed by an engineer for repair or maintenance works? What is being constructed behind the door which may prevent these works in the future? This may affect the design of the door you require.

NEW BUILDINGS are generally subject to Architectural design plans and design agreements with the Local Authority. These planning documents should be consulted first when specifying a door, but we find that the specification of the doors on a lot of plans are so broad, it is sometimes not obvious what is required. 

The main door design elements to satisfy are generally external aesthetics and whether insulation is required. The remaining design features are offered by the manufacturer, based on the door opening size and any other requirements specified by the Architect.

Once the above features have been chosen, you will then need to consider how it will operate, how often the door will be used and by whom.

AUTOMATION Very often we are called upon to replace doors, because the client wants to operate a door electrically rather than manually, wants remote control operation or requires fully automatic doors, to suit their operation. 

The level of automation will determine the specification of the door, along with the environment it will be fitted in to. A risk assessment will need to be carried out - the category of users and who may come into contact with the door given consideration. 

The user category will range from trained users in a controlled environment, to untrained users in a publicly accessible area, so the specification and range of safety devices required is quite wide. We can advise on this and fine tune the specification to suit the intended operation.

It is worth asking our advisors if your existing door may be upgraded to a different level of automation, before maybe replacing the door. 

It should be remembered, however, that automatic or electrically operated doors are generally used more often, by their very nature, so the useful life of the door will be shortened. A suitable programme of maintenance will need to be considered to match the intensity of operations.

UPGRADE SECURITY  – If you are considering a security upgrade, it is worth considering the following.

-where possible, we recommend fitting additional doors, offering a further layer of security, rather than removing an existing door and replacing it.

-a Security Rated door is only as good as the structure it is fixed to and in some cases, the Rating will be lost if the structure of your opening is not suitable.

-LPCB LPS 1175 security  ratings are generally given to door products – whilst some hefty equipment is used for testing up to level SR3, grinder attack is not mentioned until level SR4. As portable grinders are becoming more popular, consideration should be given to what level of security you really need. As the rating level goes up, the doors can become heavier and more difficult to operate, especially when you are considering hinged personnel doors.

-Where possible, if you are considering window security, we recommend fitting security shutters internally – They are more difficult to tamper with, easier to operate, generally last longer as they are shielded from the weather and you are not “advertising” your security

INSULATION UPGRADE – It is generally accepted that replacing a single skin, uninsulated door with an insulated type is a natural progression. As insulated doors have become more popular, the cost difference between these types of doors have become less, in comparison to single skin Roller Shutters for example. 

As well as reducing radiated and conducted heat loss, there is the added benefit of double skin doors letting in less draughts, reduced noise in operation and when static, plus slightly better security. 

Insulated doors generally are supplied with seals around the perimeter as standard, whereas the seals on single skin shutters are an optional extra.

It should be noted that Rolling Shutter Doors can never offer as good an overall U-value when compared to a Sectional Overhead type of door for example, due to the way they are constructed. Most manufacturers doors are designed around a plurality of slats, known as laths, which have no insulation at their edges – this leads to thermal bridging where the laths hook together.

When procuring insulated doors to control a certain environment, consideration should be given to the number of daily cycles required of the door – it is unrealistic to imagine that an insulated door will give satisfactory results if it is being opened and closed all day. If the opening is in frequent use, a Rapid Action door, as an additional or replacement door, should be considered. These doors offer the benefit of reducing the time the door is actually open, as well as ensuring it is closed after use.