Which Is the Best Commercial or Industrial Garage Door for You?

More and more often, a company’s garage door is a front-facing representation of your business to the community. Not only that, but it must be extremely functional as well. As the time approaches to choose or replace your garage doors, here are three of the most typical door choices to consider.

While in the past commercial garage doors were pretty much universally made of steel, now other materials are often used as well, such as reinforced fabrics and rubber. Together, this offers a great variety of options for industrial, agricultural, and commercial clients.

Overhead Sectional Doors, the Classic Choice

Overhead sectional doors are similar to your garage door at home, though they vary considerably in size. Basically, they are a number of horizontal panels—sections—stacked atop one another. They differ from residential construction in the way they move as the door is opened and closed and the hardware used with them.

To allow maximum clearance, these sectional doors roll up the interior walls to what are often very high ceilings. The heights of the ceilings, as well as of the garage doors themselves, often dictate the style of door that is needed. Here are the three most commonly used types of sectionals:

• Standard, resembles residential doors
• High Lift, travels up the wall and turns at the ceiling
• Full Vertical Lift, for loading and unloading locations

The largest number of commercial and industrial sectional doors are still fabricated from steel. Often, to strengthen and insulate the door, however, they are injected with polyurethane foam. Some businesses purposely elect not to insulate their doors. This happens most often when the buildings themselves do not require insulation, as with storing agricultural or industrial machinery .

Rolling Steel Doors

This is a simple design in which the doors roll up as they rise above the door. These doors are also built-in sections, though they are usually no more than three inches high. These sections are called slats.

Many times, such doors are used in the interior of structures to cordon off one part of a warehouse or factory from another. They are extremely useful in preventing contaminants from one part of a location from wafting to another.

These doors are usually required, per insurance specifications, to meet firewall codes of different ratings. For example, a door may be rated to resist fire burn-through for 30 minutes to as long as 240 minutes.

You may have seen doors like these being used in food courts or shopping centers to partition certain kiosks or storefronts off from other establishments. While sometimes these doors are actually composed of grates or screens, the one thing all such doors have in common is that they roll up.

High Speed Roll Up Doors

As you might imagine, high-speed roll-up doors do their job very quickly. Many are capable of closing at 96 inches a second, though for safety’s sake, they typically only move at about half that speed.

These doors are primarily used by industries where goods must be sectioned off so that definite conditions are preserved . For instance, in the food industry, supply houses and grocery stores use them to compartmentalize produce, refrigerated goods, and frozen foods. They are also useful in heavy industries, such as mining and rail transportation.

Often, the type of industrial use they will receive dictates the substance from which they are made. The mining industry might prefer a rubberized surface in order to withstand heavy contact from raw materials. In the manufacturing sector, vinyl doors are often used.

Are You Interested in Finding Out More About One of These Three Models?

Feel free to contact us now if you live in Lewiston and the surrounding areas.

You can call us at 207-784-0622.

Our expertise and our passion are for commercial and industrial garage doors. We have many years of experience as well as full knowledge of current codes and fabrications. Every type of door in this sector is one we are quite familiar with.

Let us send you a no-obligation quotation via email.

In case you’d like to see photos of our commercial and industrial doors before contacting us, visit our Commercial Door Picture Gallery. You may find it inspiring!