How to Protect Your Entrances from High Winds
“April showers bring May flowers,” the saying goes, but it leaves out one very important element: the wind. By now, we all expect to get rain during the month of April, but we tend to forget how windy it can get (April is the start of tornado season, after all).
Strong winds can be especially damaging to automatic doors—especially swing doors—so read on to see how you can help your doors survive the April winds and showers and get to those May flowers.
First, a Note on Building Pressure
Before we dive into automatic door maintenance, we have to mention the pressure systems at work inside buildings. This primarily affects buildings with swing doors. Every building has a specific type of pressure: positive, negative, or stack. Positive pressure results when more air comes into the building than goes out. Negative pressure is the opposite: more air leaves the building than comes in. Stack pressure results when the temperature of the air inside is different from the temperature outside, which makes the warm air rise to the top of the building and creates positive pressure while the cold air sinks to the bottom, causing negative pressure.
When buildings have positive pressure, it prevents the outside air from coming in, and with it, any pollutants or airborne germs and diseases. When buildings have negative pressure, it helps prevent any contaminants in the inside air from spreading outside or to other parts of the building. For these reasons, many commercial buildings have positive pressure, while you might find negative pressure in places like hospital isolation rooms, which are designed specifically to keep germs from spreading to other parts of the hospital.
How Wind + Pressure = Chaos for Your Swing Doors
When a building has positive pressure, there is more air coming into the building than leaving the building, which can make it easier to open doors, since there’s less force outside to resist the doors. Conversely, when a building has negative pressure, the fact that there is more outside air coming into the building than going out creates a vacuum and makes swing doors much more difficult to open.
Now, add strong winds to the mix and these conditions can be magnified—for buildings with positive pressure, swing doors can open abruptly due to a gust of wind hitting the doors and can even get stuck open, while buildings with negative pressure can see people struggling to get the doors open at all when the wind is blowing. Fortunately, automatic door experts can help make sure that no one gets accidentally stuck inside or outside your building just because the wind picked up.
How Automatic Door Experts Can Help
Since every building is different and factors like location, design, and weather exposure all play a role, it’s a good idea to work with a trusted automatic door supplier who understands these variables. A qualified professional will collaborate with your building maintenance team to identify potential concerns early and choose the right solution to keep your doors operating safely and reliably.
Our team of highly skilled professionals can offer you a variety of protections from high winds for your automatic swing doors this season, including:
- Fortified Frames – These frames give your automatic doors some extra reinforcement from the wind, including pressure-resistant panels. So you know that your door will be held firm no matter what the pressure is outdoors and indoors.
- Heavy-Duty Door Closers – To prevent your doors from being blown open or slammed shut, these heavy-duty door closers are designed to push through extra resistance and will keep your doors moving at a safe pace.
- Robust Locks – Keeping your doors closed is essential when the winds are blowing, which means having strong locks to do the job. Our locks are not only made from heavy-duty materials, but they also engage the frame at several different spots to reduce the overall strain on the lock.
- Hurricane-Rated Doors – In addition to having wind sensors and heavy-duty locks, these doors are also designed with impact-resistant glass, which makes sure that any debris flying around in the wind won’t damage or shatter your doors.
- Low-Tech Solutions – Sometimes, going old school gets the job done. In addition to all the features we mentioned above, we also use lower-tech solutions, like door stops, which can prevent your doors from hitting the wall and breaking if they open too quickly.
Make sure your doors don’t crack under pressure this spring—give our team a call today and we’ll make sure that, even when the winds are blowing, using your building’s doors feels like a walk through the flowers!