An automatic sliding door provides an attractive storefront/facility and provide ease of entrance for your employees and customers. They are very practical and designed for heavy traffic. Next time you walk into any large retailer, you will mostly likely see sliding doors at the entrance.

Sliding doors can be mounted for an opening in 2 different ways.

The first is what is called “surface applied/mounted” (pictured below). This is usually applied to smaller door openings with limited space and can be mounted on the interior or exterior of the opening. The exterior the most widely applied application.

The other method can be mounted inside of the door opening and is more aesthetically pleasing because it is a more seamless door transition from the wall to the door.

Safety required for sliding doors varies with the type of door you have have. For example, there are three different types of decals that your door is required to have present:

• Each part of the moving door must say “Automatic Door”;
• Each sliding panel must breakout in case of an emergency and must indicate this to the general public. This decal should read: “In Case of Emergency Push to Open”;
• To the side of the door, there are no sensors. So a decal must be present to warn the general public not to stand in the way of the moving door as it is opening.

Automatic sliding doors must be able to be swung open in case of an emergency. This is due to the fact that if you should lose power and there is an emergency, your customers and employees may need to exit or evacuate the building even if the door is closed and non-operable. This is a requirement guided by ANSI standards. With the doors fully closed and the power off to the door, the doors must be able to be “broken open” with 50 pounds or less of pressure. This means a small child should be able to break open the door panel.

Another component of commercial automatic sliding doors are the sensors. The sensors for a sliding door on each side have two areas:

• One area is the activation, which senses movement and activates the door to open. This happens as you walk up to the door, before you get to the door;
• The other area is the safety curtain, which must be within 3 inches of the center opening of the door. This prevents the door from closing on you if you stand there.

Sliding doors have many moving parts: Rollers, guides, bearings, belts, seals, and motors that wear out over time. These are referred to wearable items, like the tires and breaks on your car. If you don’t keep up with the wear and tear, you may find one day that your door doesn’t run at all. At this point, you will have to keep the door wide open and pay extra for an emergency call from a technician. Our preventative maintenance plans and service maintenance calls will look for these wear and tear items and recommend replacement on worn out parts.

These safety and preventative maintenance inspection measures are all included anytime we visit your facility and perform maintenance and inspection service.

All sliding doors operate from 120 volt supplied power.

If you would like to learn more about commercial automatic sliding doors, please contact us and we will be happy to discuss the specifics with you.

We proudly serve the South Houston and Galveston area and service and repair multiple types of doors: automatic and manual. You can find out more about our services here!