Glass doors are a common feature of businesses that offer vast arrays of goods and products to consumers on busy streets. If you operate a market or storefront on one of these thoroughfares, you might already have a glass door for an entrance. If the current door has been in place for a number of years, it might be time to replace that door with something newer, stronger and more attractive.
When the parts become worn, commercial glass door repair becomes necessary. Even then, you might find it better to opt for an all-out commercial glass door replacement, as this will come with today’s more secure and advanced features.
Commercial Glass Door Installation, Repair, And Replacement
There are numerous reasons to have a new glass door installed at the entrance of your business premises. With today’s newer, fortified glass, your business could be protected against storms, fires and acts of violence. Moreover, the doors are equipped with continuous hinges that run the vertical length of the adjoined side of the door.
Today’s commercial glass doors are made of specially formulated glass that offers prolonged resistance to high thermal stress. Therefore, when a fire breaks out in an adjacent building, it could take a lot longer for the flames to penetrate the glass and spread into your shop’s interior. Chances are, the fire would never even have time to advance that far because the firefighters would arrive on the scene before the flames spread to your shop. As such, fire-resistant glass could make your exterior virtually fireproof.
With a commercial glass door installation, you could ultimately fortify your shop against the impact of storms. If your business is located in an area where violent storms are common occurrences, your shop could easily withstand this season’s blizzards, hurricanes or wind blasts. The strength and protection that new glass doors provide could be an absolute necessity if the street is often plagued in the fall and winter with flying branches and chunks of hail. The price of a new glass door could help you avoid the need for costly door repairs.
Today’s glass doors for businesses are even resistant to the impacts of major natural disasters. If a hurricane rips through your town, a new glass door could possibly withstand the blasts and torrents of flying debris. This could protect your interior and inventory from damage and allow you to immediately resume business once the storm has passed. New glass business doors can even withstand the impacts of tornadoes and earthquakes. While there is no guarantee that a glass door will withstand stresses of all possible magnitudes and intensities, today’s fortified glass is better equipped for some of the biggest likely challenges.
New glass doors also provide businesses with greater protection against vandalism and street violence. In some towns and cities, both issues have become major problems in recent years. If your business is located along a thoroughfare that has been the site of rioting in the past few years, a new glass window could protect your door from damage. As such, the strength of a new glass door can also protect your interior contents from theft and looting.
Today’s new glass business doors are made with stress-resistant security film that makes that glass stronger and more resilient in the face of high-impact force and heat. When tremors or hail rip through the area, newer glass doors generally have the strength to withstand the impacts, whereas older glass doors typically shatter or incur cracks. The security film can also render these newer doors virtually bulletproof. If violence sweeps through your neighborhood, your door could withstand the blasts while others buckle in the face of random violence.
While there is no such thing as an absolutely shatter-proof type of glass, newer glass doors are a lot more difficult to break. In fact, a door made of newly fortified glass could be very difficult to crack, even if you swing a hammer at the surface. In the event that the glass does break, the cracks are generally small and isolated. If a portion of the glass dislodges on impact, it would likely do so in a large piece, which is considerably safer than the thousands of small chunks that cover the ground after an old glass door shatters.
When you purchase a new glass door for your shop or office, you could even have the glass customized with an imprint of your logo or brand name. The imprint could serve as an attraction that would no doubt leave impressions on the minds of visitors and passersby. An imprint of your business logo could complement the other signs that advertise the name, logo and mascot of your business. If you have a neon sign in your window or a perpendicular sidewalk sign, the glass imprint could further solidify your name and brand to everyone who sees the letters and enters and exits your business.
Commercial Door Closer Repair And Adjustment
Commercial glass doors are usually equipped with closers that are pre-adjusted to turn at specific rates and speeds. After the door has been set into place, it is sometimes necessary to make further adjustments to ensure that the door will open and close as designed. Door closers function through a series of four distinct control zones — back check, main speed, latch speed and delayed action.
- The first control to engage the action of the door is the back check. When you open the door, the back check will slow the movement before you extend the door to a fully opened angle. This function can prove extremely crucial in the event of a storm when the door could otherwise be blown open by the raging winds. Without this back check control, the door might be swung fully open and shut in violent sweeps that could damage the door and its surroundings. The back-check control also prevents injuries that could otherwise be caused when a door swings open or shut near an unsuspecting bystander.
- The second control function in the door closer is the main speed control, which regulates the speed of the door between the back check and latch speed zone. The main speed zone starts once the closing door has folded to an angle of approximately 70 degrees and ends once the door is angled at about 20 degrees from the closed position, at which point the latch speed control takes effect. The purpose of the main speed zone is to prevent the door from closing too fast through most of its closing cycle, as that would be dangerous for people standing or walking through in the doorway.
- The third and often final control zone in the sequence of door closer functions is the latch speed control, which begins when the closing door comes within six inches of being fully closed. The latch speed control zone can be set to regulate the door at a different speed from the prior control zone. In most cases, users prefer to make this the slowest zone, as this is when the door finally realigns with the tracks and closes shut. Without this regulating function, the speed of the door might accelerate during those final six inches.
- An optional four control zone in the sequence of a door closer is called the delayed action zone, which slows the pace of the closing function to allow for a longer and safer entrance and exit. At many commercial businesses, people will enter through the doors in packs. If you regularly have groups of friends and entire families entering into your shop or business building in clusters, the door should have a delay function, regardless of whether people are kind enough to hold the door for others. With the delayed action function, the fully opened door will remain open for a select number of seconds, allowing people to safely pass through without getting hit by the door from behind.
Each door closer is equipped with a set of adjustment valves, though the location of this feature will depend on the make and model of the door in question. If you wish to make adjustments to one of the control zones, it is crucial to select the proper valve and twist it in the right direction with a screwdriver or hex wrench. A wrong-turned or over-screwed valve could result in a hazardous closing function, such as a door that closes at an extra-slow pace before abruptly shifting to a dangerous speed.
Commercial Door Astragals And Sweeps
Along the bottom horizontal edge of a commercial door, it is crucial to have sweeps in place to prevent the flow of air and dirt from the ground. This way, whenever the door is closed, you will not have to worry about dirt blowing into your shop when the winds are rough outside. Sweeps also help to prevent insects from crawling through the thin space between the bottom of the door and the floor below. On rainy days, sweeps prevent the incoming flow of water and drizzle from the outside. If the space contracts between the door and the ground, sweeps soften the friction.
There are generally two types of sweeps for commercial doors. The most common type is the rubber sweep, which is a powerful door accessory for blocking out wind drafts and dirt. With a rubber sweep under your door, you can protect your interior insulation on days when the weather outside is exceedingly hot or cold. An alternative to the rubber sweep is the brush sweep, which consists of tight filaments that run smoothly across the ground and block unwanted passages. Brush sweeps also work better along rough grounds such as concrete floors.
Commercial glass door sweeps should be replaced every few years or whenever the edges become worn from the constant friction.
Another accessory that is necessary for most commercial doors is an astragal, which seals the gap that forms between a double-opening doorway. On a pair of mating doors, the astragal attaches vertically along the edge of one door and acts as a gap barrier when the other door closes. Astragals do for the vertical gap along the opening side of a commercial door what the sweeps do for the underside — preventing wind drafts and the flow of dirt and drizzle. With astragals, you can protect the insulation within your shop as long as the door is closed.
An astragal is an important accessory if you have a wide doorway with twin mating doors. When the weather is windy and cold outside, you can protect your interior contents and inventory from flowing drizzle on windy, rainy days. You can also block out cold drafts that might otherwise force you to rely too heavily on your heating system and pay steeper energy bills. As such, astragals can help you save money throughout the year, regardless of the weather outside.
Astragals work in combination with sweeps to make the gaps along doors more foolproof and tightly sealed.
Commercial Door Panic Hardware Repair And Replacement
On doors that open to the outside, exit devices are necessary safety features. Exit devices are also known as panic bars or push bars because they make it easier to open doors from the inside that are otherwise locked and sealed. With an exit device, a locked door that could not be opened from the outside without a key will instantly open when you push the bar. Once activated, the bar dislodges the lock and allows the door to open.
Exit devices are common at schools, allowing small children to open up big metal doors with ease. In public buildings, exit devices are required by law. Exit devices are also always seen on the doors inside of stairwells in commercial office buildings and hospitals. When fire alarms sound off or an exit drill is carried out, push bars make it easy for people of all ages, heights and strength levels to open up doors that lead to the outside.
In public buildings that are crowded throughout the day, push bars make it easy for anyone to exit with minimal physical exertion. Whether a person is frail and handicapped or too young to push open a regular door, the push bar provides an easy opening that sometimes serves as a lifesaver when a building must quickly be emptied due to a sounded fire alarm.
In a commercial business or storefront, push bar doors make it easier for customers to come and go.
For added safety and accessibility, public doorways can also be accessorized with large buttons that, when pressed, will open a door automatically. This way, people in wheelchairs who cannot lean over to push open a door can instead reach out with one hand to activate the button. A similar accessibility feature can be installed on door systems that utilize levers and pulls.
When a push lever becomes stiff and unreliable, the component should be replaced immediately.
The exit device allows people to leave without trouble and return in the future at their own leisure, making the push level a part of your shop’s appeal. On any commercial door, panic hardware repair should be carried out whenever the door fails a periodic performance inspection.
Commercial Glass Doors From Garrety Glass
Whenever you have your glass door replaced with a newer model, you should always have the installation performed by professionals. At Garrety Glass, our team offers the highest quality glass and service work. Contact Garrety today for a quote or to learn more about our products and services.
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