24/7 emergency dispatch
Commercial doors,hardware included
A commercial entrance is a glazing job and a hardware job at the same time. Break-ins rack the frame, closers wound up too hard crack patch fittings, and an offset pivot quietly takes clear width off an ADA survey. We work the whole assembly — light, frame, pivots, closer, panic device and threshold.
- 404.2.3
- Clear width checked open
- 2406.4.1
- Safety glazing in doors
- 34–48 in.
- Panic bar mounting band
D-01 · All-glass entrance — elevation
Scale NTS
Bonded & Insured
Residential and commercial
24/7 Emergency
Seven days a week
Free Estimates
No obligation
Locally Owned
Residential and commercial
Upfront Pricing
Never an overtime charge
What we work on
Every commercial door type in the DMV
Storefront pairs to revolving drums. The drawings below are the assemblies, not the brochure photograph.
Aluminium storefront pairs
Narrow, medium and wide stile leaves in a thermally broken or standard frame. We replace the light, the closer, the pivots and the weatherstrip, and we straighten racked frames rather than glazing into a twisted opening.
Automatic sliding entrances
Bi-parting and single-slide operators with header-mounted drives. Glass, carriers, tracks, activation and safety sensors — the sensor field is checked on every visit, because that is what stops the door on a person.
Revolving door enclosures
Flat wing lights and curved drum glass for hotel and tower lobbies. Curved panels are templated on site; a revolving enclosure will not accept a panel cut to a nominal radius.
French and divided-light pairs
True and simulated divided lights for restaurants and event spaces. We match muntin profile, bar width and glazing method so a replaced leaf does not read differently from its partner.
Office and suite entries
Hollow metal and aluminium leaves with vision lights, half lights and full lights. Clear, frosted, acid-etched or laminated, with lever hardware that meets the ADA operable-parts rule.
All-glass (Herculite) entrances
1/2 in. and 3/4 in. tempered lights with patch fittings, offset pivots and floor or overhead concealed closers. No stiles, so every load path runs through the patches and the glass itself.
Detail 02
Where the swing axis sits changes everything
Pivot or butt hinge is not a style choice. It decides how the leaf carries its weight and how much clear width survives when the door is open.
D-02 · Offset pivot vs butt hinge — plan
Scale NTS
A · Offset pivot
The swing axis sits inside the opening, typically a few inches in from the jamb face. The leaf edge rotates into the frame rather than projecting past it, the whole door weight goes down through the bottom pivot to the floor, and an overhead or floor closer shares that centreline. It is how heavy all-glass and wide-stile leaves get hung. The trade is clear width: measure it with the door open, not off the frame.
B · Butt hinge
The barrel sits outboard of the door face on the jamb, so the leaf swings almost entirely clear of the opening. Every pound of the door is then carried in shear by the hinge screws into the jamb, which is why sagging leaves, elongated screw holes and binding at the head are hinge problems far more often than they are frame problems. Continuous geared hinges spread that load over the full height.
What we check on site
Leaf weight against the pivot or hinge rating, closer sweep and latch speed, backcheck before the leaf hits a wall, and clear width taped with the door at 90 degrees.
Detail 03
Egress hardware and the accessibility rules that follow it
A panic device is a life-safety component with dimensional requirements. So is the door it is mounted to.
D-03 · Rim panic device — partial elevation
Scale NTS
ADA 404.2.3
Clear width
32 in. minimum measured between the face of the open door and the opposite stop, with the leaf at 90 degrees. Offset pivots take a bite out of this, which is why we check it with the door open rather than reading the frame size.
ADA 404.2.5
Thresholds
Half an inch maximum, and anything over a quarter inch gets bevelled at 1:2. Worn thresholds and added floor finishes are the usual reason an entrance that once passed no longer does.
ADA 404.2.7
Operable parts
Hardware operable with one hand, without tight grasping, pinching or wrist twisting, and mounted 34 to 48 in. above the floor. Levers, pulls and push bars qualify; a round knob does not.
ADA 404.2.9
Opening force
Interior hinged doors: 5 lbf maximum. Most failures we find are a closer wound up to fight a draught or a warped frame, not the door itself.
ADA 404.2.4
Manoeuvring clearance
Floor space on both sides sized by approach direction and latch side. It is the requirement most often lost to a planter, a mat or a queue rail rather than to the door hardware.
IBC 1010
Egress
Panic hardware releases the latch in a single motion with no key, tool or special knowledge, and the activating bar spans at least half the leaf width, mounted 34 to 48 in. above the finished floor.
Break-in and storm response
An open storefront is a security problem before it is a glass problem
The first job is not the glass. It is closing the hole, making the frame safe to leave, and getting the documentation your insurer will ask for. Permanent glazing follows once the opening is measured properly.
- Boarding stock and fixings on every emergency truck
- Frames made safe before anyone is left on site alone
- Timestamped photographs of damage, frame and hardware
- Standard commercial sizes glazed the same day where we hold them
- Overnight and weekend installation so trading hours are not lost
- Temporary security glazing while a custom light is fabricated
How the call runs
- 1
Dispatch
Call the line and a crew is routed from the nearest staging point with boarding stock on the truck.
- 2
Secure and document
The opening is boarded, the frame is made safe, and everything is photographed with timestamps for the insurer.
- 3
Template on site
Daylight opening, glass thickness, edgework, hardware prep and hole locations recorded for fabrication.
- 4
Glaze and re-hang
Standard sizes go in the same day. Custom tempered lights follow once the fabricator releases them.
Scope
The hardware schedule we actually service
Glass is one line on a door schedule. These are the rest of them.
Closers, pivots and floor springs
Overhead concealed, surface and floor-mounted. Sweep, latch and backcheck set to the leaf weight, because a closer adjusted too hard is the fastest way to break a patch fitting.
Panic and exit devices
Rim, mortise, surface and concealed vertical rod. Mounted 34 to 48 in. above the floor with an activating bar over half the leaf width, releasing in one motion with no key or special knowledge.
Locks and access control
Mortise and cylindrical locks, electric strikes, mag locks with the egress interlocks the fire marshal expects, card readers and keypads tied into the building system.
Automatic operators
Low-energy and full-power operators, push plates, motion and presence sensors. Sensor patterns are set and tested against the actual approach, not a factory default.
Patch fittings and rails
Top and bottom patches, corner locks, over-panel patches and bottom rails in 4 in. and 10 in. heights, in finishes that match what is already hanging in the opening.
Frames and thresholds
Straightening bent aluminium, replacing corroded sub-sills, re-anchoring loose jambs and setting thresholds that stay under the ADA half-inch limit.
Sidelites and transoms
Fixed lights beside and above the leaf. Safety glazing rules follow the door, so a sidelite within the arc of the swing comes back as tempered or laminated.
Applied security film
Retains the fragments when a tempered light is broken, which buys minutes on a smash-and-grab. Specified with the anchoring method, because film alone in a dry-glazed frame does very little.
Who calls us
Buildings we are in every week
Property managers and general contractors get one point of contact across a portfolio, one set of documentation, and out-of-hours scheduling that keeps tenants trading.
Broken now, or planned for next quarter
Emergency board-up, a single light, or a full entrance package with hardware. Send photographs of the door and the frame and we will tell you what it needs.
Questions
Commercial door glass, answered
For a break-in or storm damage we aim to be rolling within 30 to 45 minutes of the call, depending on where in the DMV you are and what the traffic is doing, and the first job on arrival is boarding the opening. Standard commercial door sizes we hold in stock are frequently glazed the same day. Custom and oversized tempered lights have to be fabricated, which is normally two to three business days. Mechanical work on an automatic operator is usually finished within four to eight hours of dispatch.
Yes. Horton, Stanley, Besam, Assa Abloy, Dorma, Nabco and Record are all in regular rotation for us, across the mechanical, electrical and sensor side of each. Common wear parts ride on the truck for same-day repair, and brand-specific components are normally sourced within 24 to 48 hours.
Glazing in a door is a hazardous location under IBC 2406.4.1, so it comes back as safety glazing — tempered or laminated — with no annealed glass in the leaf. Sidelites and panels close to the door often fall into the same category depending on their size and how near they sit to the leaf. All-glass entrances are typically 1/2 in. or 3/4 in. fully tempered, because the light is carrying the hardware loads with no stile to help it.
Five things get checked: 32 in. minimum clear width with the leaf open 90 degrees, a threshold no higher than half an inch, hardware operable with one hand between 34 and 48 in. above the floor, an opening force within limits for interior hinged doors, and manoeuvring clearance on both faces. On all-glass doors the clear width is the one that catches people out, because an offset pivot sets the swing axis inside the opening. Where the geometry cannot be made to work, a low-energy automatic operator resolves both the force and the clear-width question.
Yes. Laminated safety glass in a range of interlayer thicknesses, forced-entry-resistant make-ups, and ballistic glazing to UL 752 protection levels for banks, dispensaries, jewellers and government work. The frame and anchoring have to be specified alongside the glass — laminated glass in a frame that lets it pop out of the pocket is not a security assembly.
The whole assembly. Glass, aluminium and steel frames, closers, pivots, floor springs, locks, panic hardware, automatic operators, sensors, thresholds and weatherstrip. On a break-in we normally find the frame is out of square as well as the glass being gone, and glazing a new light into a racked frame simply breaks it again.
Yes. Scheduled inspection programmes covering closer and operator adjustment, sensor testing, hardware tightening, weatherseal replacement and glazing condition, with priority response for the portfolio. Most of the emergency calls we attend were preventable at the previous service visit — a closer left too fast, a loose patch fitting, a sensor drifting out of pattern.
Routinely. Retail and restaurant entrances cannot be closed for a glazing job in the middle of trade, so most planned commercial work happens overnight or at the weekend. Emergency response runs around the clock, seven days a week.
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