A manufacturing plant has openings that a normal commercial building never deals with. Doors that separate a clean area from a dirty one. Doors that hold a temperature. Doors sized for a machine that had to come in on a lowboy. And doors that are part of the building’s fire separation, whether anyone on the floor knows it or not.
All Pro Door Repair has serviced industrial buildings across Dallas-Fort Worth since 2001. Here’s how the three big openings work in a plant, and what usually goes wrong with them.
Overhead doors in a plant do more than let trucks in
In a warehouse an overhead door is a hole for a trailer. In a plant it’s often doing a job. It’s holding dust out of a finishing room, keeping conditioned air in a machining bay, or dividing two processes that can’t share air.
That changes what matters. Speed matters, because a door that takes 14 seconds to open is 14 seconds of air exchange every single cycle. Sealing matters. And cycle life matters more than almost anywhere else, because a door between two departments can run hundreds of cycles a shift.
We repair and install:
- Sectional steel and insulated overhead doors
- Rolling steel doors and counter shutters
- High-cycle torsion spring packages on interior traffic doors
- Commercial gearboxes, motors and drive mechanisms
- Tracks, chains, sprockets, cables and rollers
- Safety limiters, sensors and wiring
One note worth raising with your safety team. If your building has fire-rated rolling doors, they carry a manufacturer’s label and fall under an annual inspection and drop-test requirement in NFPA 80. Plenty of plants have these doors held open by a fusible link and have never had one tested. Ask us what we can cover on yours when we’re out.
More detail on our commercial overhead door repair and installation page.
Entry doors and hardware in an industrial building
Plant personnel doors take abuse that office doors never see. People go through them with both hands full. Carts hit them. They get held open with a bucket in July because the bay is hot, and the closer arm takes the strain.
The failures are predictable. Closers blow their seals and start weeping fluid down the door. Exit devices get worn until the latch doesn’t throw and the door stops securing. Hollow metal frames rust at the floor line where wash water sits. Hinges sag on doors that are heavier than the hardware was specced for.
We work on hollow metal doors and frames, aluminum storefront entries at the office side of the building, closers, pivots, exit devices and continuous hinges. If a door is beyond repair, we’ll say so and price the replacement instead of selling you a hardware patch that fails again in eight months.
Glass and glazing on the plant floor and up front
Industrial glass shows up in three places. There’s the front entry and lobby, which is the only part of the building most visitors ever see. There are the supervisor offices and QC rooms out on the floor. And there are vision panels in doors, which exist for a real safety reason and get ignored when they break.
We handle storefront glazing and glass replacement, glass partition walls for offices built out on the floor, and window security film for ground-level glass on buildings that sit empty over the weekend. If a panel goes out after hours and the opening can’t be left open, we can secure it and come back for the permanent glazing.
Full details on our commercial glass and glazing services.
Scheduling around production
The hard part of industrial door work usually isn’t the door. It’s getting to it. A door in the middle of a production line can’t come out of service at 10am on a Wednesday, and a lot of plants only have a real window on a weekend or between shifts.
We’re available after hours and on weekends, and for planned work we’d rather schedule around your run than force a shutdown. For plants with a lot of openings, a maintenance agreement lets us batch the small stuff into one scheduled visit instead of trickling out emergency calls all year.
Common questions from plant and facility managers
Can you match a door opening that isn’t a standard size?
Yes. Industrial openings are frequently custom, and oversized or odd-sized doors are normal work for us. We measure the opening rather than guessing from a drawing, and the measurement is free.
Our interior door between departments keeps breaking springs. Why?
Almost always cycle count. Interior traffic doors run far more cycles than exterior dock doors, and they’re often built with the same standard spring package. Re-springing for the actual cycle load usually solves it for good.
Do you service the drive mechanisms, not just the door?
We do. Commercial motors, gearboxes, chains, sprockets, limiters and wiring are all part of what we repair.
Can you handle doors, gates and glass on the same visit?
Yes, and for multi-building industrial sites that’s usually the efficient way to do it. One vendor, one work order, one point of contact.
Talk to a Dallas-Fort Worth industrial door contractor
All Pro Door Repair is family owned and operated since 2001, fully insured, with technicians who each carry a minimum of five years in the field. We answer emergency calls 24/7 because industrial doors don’t wait for business hours.
Call (972) 624-1515 or request a free estimate.