Case study · Holbrooks, Coventry CV6
Two fire exits made right — new SION panic bolts and transom closers
Panic hardware is the one piece of door furniture that is genuinely life-safety equipment. When the mechanism behind a push bar wears, the vertical rods stop throwing cleanly into the frame and threshold — the door either fails to secure, or worse, fails to release under a single push. Neither is acceptable on the escape route of a busy dental practice. Rather than patch the old units, we stripped both fire exit doors back and fitted new SION vertical panic bolts — the boxed kits in the photographs — with fresh push bars, rods and keeps, and new “Push bar to open” signage across each bar.
Above each door we fitted a new transom closer at the same time. The closer and the panic bolt work as a pair: the closer pulls the leaf back square onto its seals after every use, so the rods drop home and the exit secures itself behind whoever passed through. Fit new hardware onto a tired closer and the door wanders back half-latched — which is how “secure” fire exits end up wedged open with a bin. Both doors now close, latch and release as one tested system.
The patient entrance — power assistance restored
The third door on the list was the practice’s power-assisted patient entrance — a glazed automatic swing door operated from a wall-mounted push pad. For a dental practice this is an accessibility fixture as much as a convenience: patients arriving with wheelchairs, walking frames or pushchairs rely on the door opening itself. Our engineer repaired the overhead operator, then proved the full cycle from the pad — a clean assisted swing open, a controlled close, and a correct hold time between the two. You can watch it working in the video further down the page.
Work completed at Holbrooks Dental
- Panic hardware — two fire exit doors fitted with new SION push-bar panic bolts, vertical rods, keeps and signage.
- Transom closers — new closers fitted to both exit doors so each leaf returns square and self-secures after use.
- Automatic door — power-assisted patient entrance repaired and full open/close cycle tested from the push pad.
- Compliance check — every door tested through closing, latching and single-push release before handover.
Commercial door repair across Coventry & the CV postcodes
Commercial Door Maintenance and Security Ltd covers the whole of Coventry — Holbrooks, Foleshill, Radford and Bell Green in the north of the city through the centre and out to Bedworth, Nuneaton, Warwick, Leamington Spa and Rugby. For surgeries, dental practices and clinics we handle the full set of door trades in one visit: panic hardware, transom closers and floor springs, automatic and power-assisted doors, fire door compliance and emergency call-outs. Most jobs are quoted the same day from a photograph, with the right parts on the van when we arrive.
