Automatic Door Replacement and Modernization

A complete replacement covers the header, operator, drive, controls, sensors, activation devices and panels. Where the existing frame is square, structurally sound and the right size, the new system goes into it — which keeps the work to a single visit and avoids disturbing the glazing and the wall around the opening.

Where the frame, header or threshold has to come out as well, we handle the full tear-out and rebuild: new jambs, header, threshold and glazing, with the structure checked before anything is set. The opening is secured overnight so the building is never left open between the removal and the new install.

Replacement is normally scheduled overnight or before opening in retail, healthcare and hospitality, and staged one leaf at a time in multi-leaf entrances so a route through the building stays available.

Often the panels, track and frame are fine and only the operator has failed. Replacing the operator on its own is faster, needs no glazing work and leaves the entrance looking exactly as it did.

We replace surface header, overhead-concealed and in-floor operators on swing doors, and header operators on sliding systems. The new unit is sized to the door leaf weight, width and duty cycle rather than matched to whatever happened to be there before — an undersized operator is one of the more common reasons an entrance keeps failing after it has already been repaired twice.

Controls, limits and the sensor package are replaced with the operator where the existing devices are obsolete or worn, so the whole drive chain is current rather than half new and half original.

Adding an operator to a door you already have is the least disruptive way to automate an entrance. We fit low-energy operators to existing swing doors and retrofit operators to existing sliders, then place the activation devices where people actually approach the opening.

This is the usual route for a building that needs an accessible entrance, for a heavy exterior door that visitors struggle with, and for interior openings — restrooms, vestibules, corridors and suite doors — where a manual door has become an obstacle.

The survey confirms whether the existing frame and header can carry an operator, whether the door leaf weight is within range, and where the power feed will come from. Where the frame will not take the load, we say so before anything is ordered.

Legacy electro-hydraulic and pneumatic operators are converted to modern electromechanical drives. Obsolete control boards are replaced with current logic and cross-referenced where the original part is no longer produced. Older sensor packages are swapped for current motion, presence and safety devices.

Modernization also covers full-energy to low-energy conversions and the reverse, adding touchless activation to an operator that still works, and bringing an older entrance back to the timing, force and sensing behaviour its governing standard calls for.

On buildings where the entrance is sound but the surrounding hardware is not, we also renew thresholds, weather seals, bottom guides and breakout hardware as part of the same visit.

A replacement is the one moment when the configuration itself can change without extra structural work. Single-slide entrances become bi-parting where cart or trolley traffic has outgrown one moving panel. Bi-parting entrances become telescopic where the building needs a wider clear opening than the wall space allows.

Manual leaves in a vestibule pair become powered, breakout arrangements are added where egress requires them, and swing entrances become sliders where the swing path has been eaten by a new layout.