Start from what the door is doing
Commercial Door Repair in Charlotte, NC
Repair work on commercial doors across Charlotte, sorted by what an opening has started doing and by where it sits in the building. An entrance and a dock door fail in different directions even when they are the same steel leaf from the same manufacturer, because one gets wind and public hands and the other gets carts, weather and a pallet corner.
Symptoms, and what they usually turn out to be
Most commercial door repairs are one of about seven things. Finding the row that matches will not fix the door, but it will get the right parts onto the van, which is most of the difference between one visit and three.
| What the door is doing | What it usually means | Where it is covered |
|---|---|---|
| It closes but it does not latch | The closer is running out of energy before the end of the stroke, the strike has shifted after the leaf dropped, or an exit device is no longer meeting its keeper squarely. | latching on labelled openings exit devices and strikes |
| It drags on the floor or catches at the strike edge | Hinge wear and screw holes that have opened up in the frame, so the leaf has lost height on the latch side. On a glass door the same symptom points at the bottom patch fitting and the pivot under it. | hinges losing alignment patch fittings and pivots |
| It slams, or it takes far too long to close | Closer valves, spring power, or an arm fitted at the wrong preload. On an exterior opening, wind and stack pressure the closer was never sized against. | closers on exterior openings |
| A pair closes in the wrong order | The coordinator on a cross-corridor pair, or an astragal that has been struck out of shape and is holding the inactive leaf proud. | coordinators and astragals |
| The bottom of the leaf is rusting, dented or split | Water and grit sitting at the threshold, plus cart and pallet impact. Whether it is a repair depends on whether the face sheet has been holed. | corrosion at the bottom rail cart strikes back of house |
| It only binds in the afternoon, or only in summer | Thermal movement in the frame rather than wear in the hinges. A door that swings freely at eight and drags at three is describing its frame, not its hardware. | drop and drag on high-cycle leaves |
| The same part has failed twice | A grade and sizing question rather than a parts question, and often a frame that is moving under whatever gets bolted to it. | repeat hardware failures |
None of this is a diagnosis. It is the shortlist a call starts from, and it is why the first question on the phone is where the opening sits rather than what it is made of.
The six lines a repair gets sorted into
Six lines, sorted by where the opening lives rather than by what it is made of. An entrance behaves differently from a dock door even when the two are the same steel leaf from the same manufacturer, because one gets wind and public hands and the other gets carts and weather and a forklift that came too close. The sixth line is the exception to the rule: hardware that high-cycle openings consume, regardless of which door it is bolted to.
Entrance and Vestibule Door Service
The doors the public uses, which take more cycles in a month than most openings take in a year.
Glass Door and Patch Fitting Service
All-glass and narrow stile entries, floor closers, patch fittings and the pivots underneath them.
Loading Dock Personnel Door Service
The man door beside the dock — the one that takes the weather, the carts and the corner of every pallet.
Stairwell and Cross-Corridor Door Service
Labelled openings that have to close and latch on their own, every time, without anybody thinking about them.
Back-of-House Door and Hardware Service
Kitchen passes, stockroom doors and service corridors — the highest-cycle openings in almost any building.
High-Traffic Hardware Replacement
Closers, exit devices, locksets and hinges on openings that consume hardware rather than merely using it.
When a repair stops being a repair
There is a point past which adjusting an opening is money spent on a symptom. A leaf that has lost its flatness will never sit right against a stop again. A frame whose anchors have failed in the wall will move under anything bolted to it. A labelled assembly that has been field-modified past correcting cannot be brought back by tightening things. In each of those cases the honest answer is a new door, a new frame, or both, and it gets said plainly rather than after a second invoice.
That side of the work — replacement leaves and frames, new thresholds, hardware fitted new and sized for the opening — is set out on the entrance installation and replacement page. Where the thing that keeps failing is the hardware rather than the door, grades, rebuilds and panic hardware is the page for it.
Where the lane ends
Three things are permanently out of lane: automatic and power-operated entrances, overhead sectional and coiling doors, and the certified annual fire door inspection record that NFPA 80 contemplates. Each service page names what it excludes, so nobody discovers a boundary on the day of the visit.
If your opening belongs to one of those trades, say so on the phone and you will usually get a pointer to somebody who works on them daily.