Cycles, codes, scope, process
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Before you call
What counts as a high-cycle opening?
There is no official threshold, and anybody who quotes you one is making it up. As a working rule, if more than a few hundred people pass through an opening on a normal day — a lobby vestibule, a restaurant service door, a corridor between a sales floor and a stockroom, a stair door in an occupied office tower — treat it as high cycle and expect hardware to be a consumable rather than a fixture.
Do you only work in Charlotte proper?
Yes. Not the county, not the ring towns, not across the state line.
Can you tell me what is wrong over the phone?
Often we can narrow it to two or three things, which is usually enough to bring the right parts. Where the opening is, what changed recently, whether it still latches on its own, and whether the problem is worse in the afternoon than the morning — that last one sounds odd and it is one of the more useful questions, because a door that only drags when the building is warm is telling you about the frame rather than the hinges.
Is this maintenance-contract work or one-off calls?
One-off calls. Somebody phones because a door is doing something it should not, we come and sort it. If a building wants a scheduled programme with paperwork attached, that is a different kind of outfit and we will say so.
Do you do automatic doors?
No. Sliders, swing operators and anything with a sensor header belongs to a contractor who works on those daily and carries the right training for them. If your vestibule has manual doors on one line and an operator on the other, we take the manual line and you keep the automatic contractor for the rest.
What about the big overhead door at the dock?
Also no. Sectional and coiling doors are a separate trade with separate tooling and separate risk. The personnel door beside the dock, the one people actually walk through, is very much ours.
Our fire doors need inspecting. Can you do that?
We can service them, adjust them and replace hardware on them. What we do not do is issue the annual inspection record NFPA 80 requires — that wants an inspector whose qualification the authority having jurisdiction will accept, and it is a documentation product rather than a repair. We will tell you when something we are looking at would fail that inspection, which is worth knowing before the inspector arrives rather than after.
Why is there no pricing on this site?
Because the same symptom on two openings can be a fifteen-minute adjustment or a leaf and frame replacement. Publishing a figure would mean publishing a figure for a door we have not seen.
Do you work in occupied buildings during business hours?
Most of the work happens that way. Some of it should not — a corridor pair in a hospital wing or a main entrance at a restaurant during service is better scheduled around the building's day. That changes the figure and you hear by how much before agreeing to it.
Cycles, wear and hardware grades
What does a hardware grade actually mean?
It is a tested performance tier under an ANSI/BHMA standard, and the standard number matters as much as the grade. A156.4 covers door closers and Grade 1 there means two million tested cycles. A156.3 covers exit devices and Grade 1 there means five hundred thousand cycles with a preload applied to the door, a requirement added in the 2014 revision that made the test materially harder to pass. Saying 'Grade 1' without naming the standard is not a specification, it is a vibe.
How long should a door closer last?
On an opening it was correctly sized for, many years. On an opening it was undersized for, the answer is measured in seasons. Most early closer failures trace back to a unit fighting a wind load or a stack pressure it was never specified against, not to a defective product.
Our doors are all the same age. Why do only some of them fail?
Because they are not the same age in any sense that matters. Two leaves installed on the same day can be a hundred times apart in cycles by year three. Age is a proxy people use because it is easy to know. Traffic is the thing that actually predicts failure, and almost nobody measures it.
Is a heavier door a better door?
Sometimes, and gauge is the honest way to talk about it. ANSI/SDI A250.8 sorts standard steel doors into performance levels with face-sheet thicknesses attached — Level 1 at 20 gauge through Level 4 at 14 gauge. Separately, ANSI/SDI A250.4 grades physical endurance at 250,000 cycles for Level C, 500,000 for Level B and a million for Level A. A Level 1 leaf on a dock corridor is the wrong door and it will keep being the wrong door however many times it gets repaired.
What actually wears out first on a hard-used opening?
Usually the closer's arm geometry and the strike, in that order, followed by hinges losing their vertical alignment. The lock is rarely first, which surprises people, because the lock is the part everyone touches.
Can worn hardware be rebuilt rather than replaced?
Exit devices frequently can, and a rebuild kit on a Grade 1 device is usually the better value than a new Grade 2 unit. Closers with a weeping seal cannot — a leaking closer is a closer at the end of its life and re-filling it is a myth that will not die.
Codes, labels and compliance
How much gap is allowed around a fire door?
NFPA 80 sets the limits and they are tighter than most people expect. On hollow metal assemblies the clearance at the head, the jambs and the meeting stiles of a pair runs to an eighth of an inch with a sixteenth of tolerance either way, and the clearance underneath is capped at three quarters of an inch. Twenty-minute doors in hollow metal frames get slightly more room. Excessive gaps are among the most commonly written-up findings in the country.
We put new flooring in and now the fire doors fail. Why?
Because the undercut is measured to the finished floor, and adding covering reduces it. It usually moves the door out of tolerance in the direction of too little clearance rather than too much, and it is one of the few compliance problems created entirely by a trade that never touched the door.
Can I cut down a fire door to fit?
Trimming the bottom is permitted only up to whatever the door's own listing allows, which is commonly the three-quarter-inch limit but can be less. Trimming the top or the width is generally not a permitted field modification at all. The label is the authority here, not a rule of thumb, and a leaf modified past its listing has stopped being a rated assembly regardless of what the label still says.
What is the ADA opening force limit?
Under section 404.2.9 of the 2010 ADA Standards, an interior hinged door has a ceiling of five pounds. Two details get misread constantly. That ceiling excludes whatever force it takes to pull the latch bolt back, and exterior hinged doors carry no stated maximum at all, since wind and pressure differentials would make any single figure meaningless. Rated openings sit outside this and defer to the authority having jurisdiction.
Is there a rule for how long a door should take to shut?
Yes, and it is a stopwatch measurement rather than a judgement. Section 404.2.8 puts a floor of five seconds on the travel from ninety degrees open down to twelve degrees off the latch. Spring hinges answer to their own figure — no quicker than a second and a half from seventy degrees to shut. The sweep valve governs it. This is one of the quieter failures in a building, because a door that snaps shut smartly reads to most people as a door in good order.
What forces apply to egress doors generally?
The building code, rather than the ADA standards, sets the operating limits for egress doors including exterior and fire doors — thirty pounds to set a swinging door in motion and fifteen pounds to swing it fully open. Those are the numbers an inspector with a gauge will be working to.
Do you issue fire door inspection reports?
No. We service and repair the assemblies and we will tell you plainly when something in front of us would not pass, but the annual record NFPA 80 asks a building owner to keep should come from an inspector whose qualification your authority having jurisdiction accepts.
Working with us
How quickly can somebody come out?
It depends on the week and you will be given a real answer rather than a reassuring one. Working one city means the drive is rarely the constraint.
Do you charge to come and look?
A visit whose only purpose is to price something does carry a charge, agreed with you in advance. Where the same trip is the repair, looking is part of it and costs nothing extra.
Will you tell me the part numbers?
Yes. Ask and you get them.
Do you work weekends or outside building hours?
For openings that cannot be taken out of service during the day, yes. It changes the figure and you hear by how much first.
What do I get afterwards?
What was found, what was done, the parts that went in, and what is coming next on that opening. In writing if you want it in writing.
Can you look at more than one door while you are there?
Please ask. Walking three more openings while the van is already parked outside costs almost nothing and it frequently reshuffles what a building decides to prioritise.