Door installation and repair in Burlington

Yes, and it is the usual way an opening gets its rating. A labelled hollow metal door and frame carries a rating of 20, 45, 60, 90 or 180 minutes, certified by ULC or UL, with a mineral core where the rating requires one. Every part of the assembly has to be labelled and compatible — door, frame, hinges, closer, latch and any glazing — which is why a rated opening is specified as one assembly rather than assembled from parts. The rated line is covered on our fire-rated doors pages.

A closer is a mechanical device that shuts a door you opened yourself — a spring and a hydraulic damper, no power. An operator opens the door for you, under electric or electro-hydraulic power, and then controls the closing as well. They look similar from the floor because both live in a box above the door, and enquiries mix them up constantly. If nobody has to pull the door, it is an operator. If the question is only "how fast and how hard does it close", it is a closer, and that is door hardware rather than automation.

The common commercial single leaf is 3′0″ × 7′0″, with pairs made up to 8′0″ wide, and 8′0″-tall leaves where equipment has to pass. Aluminum entrance leaves are 1¾″ thick as standard. Sliding, folding and curtain-wall openings are not standard at all — they are sized to the opening and measured on site.

Two formed steel face sheets welded or interlocked around a core, hung in a steel frame. The name describes how it is built rather than what is inside it — the cavity is filled with honeycomb, polystyrene, polyurethane, mineral board or steel stiffeners depending on what the opening has to do. It is the standard commercial door in Ontario because it is dimensionally stable, can carry a fire label, and every part of it can be repaired in place.

Yes, provided the frame will take the unit. This is one of the most common requests we get from hotels, offices and property managers: keep the elevation, change the glass, cut the solar gain and the heat loss. The constraint is the glazing pocket — the frame has to accept the thickness of the new sealed unit, and an older frame built for single glazing often cannot. We check the pocket depth and the frame condition on the first visit and tell you which of the two projects you are actually looking at.

The building operator owns the fixed equipment and the condition it is kept in. In Ontario that sits under the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the Industrial Establishments regulation, which require equipment to be maintained and to be capable of doing the job it is used for. Trailer creep, unrestrained trailers and levelers left in an unsafe position cause the injuries that follow. Practically: keep bumpers within wear limits, keep the leveler serviced, and use a restraint or wheel chocks with a communication system so a driver cannot pull away under a forklift.