Case study · MKM Building Supplies, Shrewsbury
The bolt in the transom
A concealed transom closer is held in the transom bar by a small number of bolts, and on an aluminium shopfront that faces the weather those bolts live in a channel that collects water, grit and whatever blows in off a builders’ yard. At Shrewsbury the closer had reached the end of its hydraulic life, which is what the branch noticed: the leaf swung freely and did not come back to the latch. What they could not see was the fixing. The bolt we lifted out of the channel is in the photograph above, rusted from a clean hex head to a brown stub. A closer can only control a door if it is firmly anchored, and this one was close to losing its anchor altogether.
The old unit was an Adams Rite ARC-51N, the blue-bodied concealed closer we meet on a large share of aluminium entrances from the last twenty years and have replaced at the Speed Queen launderette in Thornaby and the Volkswagen Van Centre in Liverpool among others. The replacement is a current concealed closer of the same format, fitted with a new side arm into a cleaned-out channel on fresh fixings. The before-and-after of the arms tells its own story: the old one dull and pitted in the top rail, the new one bright zinc in the same slot.
Two automatic doors, serviced while we were there
The branch’s main customer entrance is a pair of automatic sliding doors in a glazed lobby, and MKM asked us to carry out maintenance on both at the same visit. The clips on this page show the work: the engineer at the operator head of each door checking the drive and the carriage track, the “Automatic Door” and “Keep Clear” vinyls in frame, and the doors run open and closed from inside the lobby with hazard tape across the opening. Sensors were tested from both sides, the floor guides and threshold were cleared and the closing force checked, so that the doors were handed back running as they should rather than as they happened to be.
Keeping a trade counter open
MKM opens at seven on weekdays and its customers arrive in vans with a job to get to. Closing an entrance for the morning is not an option, so the work was sequenced around the two doors: the manual pair fenced off on the forecourt with yellow barriers while the transom was open, then the automatic doors taken one at a time with the lobby taped so that a customer could always get in through the other. Our retail sector page describes how we plan this kind of visit for branches that cannot shut.
Work completed at MKM Building Supplies, Shrewsbury
- Manual entrance — one concealed transom closer and side arm replaced on the double aluminium doors; corroded ARC-51N and rusted fixing bolt removed; closing and latching speeds set.
- Automatic entrance — maintenance service on both automatic sliding doors: operator head and drive checked, carriages and track inspected, sensors tested, threshold and guides cleared.
- Access — forecourt barriers at the manual doors; hazard tape and one door at a time in the automatic lobby; branch trading throughout.
- Handover — both entrances left in good working order the same day.
Commercial door repairs in Shrewsbury and Shropshire
Commercial Door Maintenance and Security Ltd covers Shrewsbury, Telford, Oswestry and the rest of Shropshire from our Telford base, for merchants, retail parks, farms and offices. Transom closers, automatic sliding operators, floor springs and panic hardware are all carried as stock lines. Send a photograph of the door head or the operator cover and we will identify the unit and quote the same day.
