Door installation and repair in Cambridge

Often, and it is the smaller job. If the frame is square, solidly anchored and not rusted through, a new leaf can be made to the existing frame's dimensions and hardware locations. What rules it out is a frame that has been pushed out of square, one whose anchors have let go in the masonry, or rust at the floor line that leaves nothing to fix a hinge to. We check the frame on the measure and tell you which of the two jobs it is.

Exterior storefronts are almost always glazed with a 1″ sealed insulating unit — two lites with a spacer and an argon or air cavity — with a low-E coating on one surface and the outer lite tempered where the code requires safety glazing. Interior storefront and partition glazing is usually monolithic 6 mm (¼″) tempered. Laminated glass replaces tempered where security, sound or fragment retention matters.

A 3'0" by 7'0" single leaf is the commercial standard, and most rear, service and stairwell doors in Ontario are that size. Widths run from 2'0" to 4'0" in two-inch increments and heights are usually 6'8", 7'0" or 8'0", with 4'0" by 8'0" the largest standard single leaf before the door, its hinges and its frame all become custom. Standard pairs are built from two standard leaves — 6'0" by 7'0", from a pair of 3'0" doors, is the common double door. Staying on that grid is the difference between a door that ships in days and one that joins the four-to-six-week production queue.

Only with care, and sometimes not at all. Any opening on an exit route has to be openable from inside without a key, a tool or special knowledge, and a locked grille across it defeats that. In practice grilles close units that are empty, with the egress handled by a separate door with the hardware the code requires. We work that out at the survey, not after the grille is made.

Almost always repaired. Sensors, belts, carriers, rollers, guides, control boards and motors are all replaceable in place, and we hold parts for the lines we deal in. Replacement becomes the honest answer in three cases: the framing is damaged or out of square beyond adjustment, the system is old enough that boards and carriers are no longer made, or the opening now has to do something it was never built for — usually become barrier-free or wider. We will tell you which of those you are looking at before quoting.

Only if it is listed for both, and many are not. A fire shutter's job is to close on alarm; a security shutter's job is to be locked shut against entry. Assemblies exist that do both, and where an opening genuinely needs both functions that is what should be specified — but hanging a lock on a fire shutter, or expecting a security shutter to hold a fire, is how buildings end up with an opening that fails at whichever job it is asked to do first.