Case study · OneSchool Global, Tewkesbury
Installing a concealed closer into an aluminium fire exit
A concealed transom closer lives inside the transom bar above the door, with a spindle down into the top rail of the leaf and an arm that slides in a channel as the door swings. On a school door it is the right format for three reasons: nothing projects into the opening for a pupil to hang on, the hydraulics are out of the weather, and the closing speed and latch action can be set so that the door shuts behind a crowd without slamming on the last one through. The unit fitted at Tewkesbury is an Adams Rite ARC51N, the EN3-rated closer photographed in its box at the top of this page, which suits a single aluminium leaf of this width and weight.
Fitting it is not the whole job. The leaf has to hang true on its pivots for the closer to bring it home, so the bottom pivot and top centre were checked and the threshold cleared before the closer went in, the lock and thumbturn were tested, and the arm was aligned so that the leaf comes to the latch square. The first clip shows the door open with the stepladder in the corridor, the engineer’s finger on the closer bar and then the door swinging shut by itself; that last second is the test that matters.
Escape doors on a school campus
The Tewkesbury campus has its fire exits arranged along covered walkways, so a door that stands ajar is both an escape route left open and an unsupervised way in from the grounds. Keeping every one of those doors self-closing is a safeguarding task as much as a fire one. We have carried out the same work for Westglade Primary School in Nottingham, where four aluminium fire doors were re-kitted after a health and safety review, and at Kingswinford Academy on three sports-block doors. Our education sector page describes how we schedule this kind of visit around the timetable.
Work completed at OneSchool Global, Tewkesbury Campus
- Scope — maintenance and repairs to one anthracite aluminium fire exit door in the covered walkway.
- Service — bottom pivot, top centre and threshold checked; lock and thumbturn tested; leaf swung and aligned.
- Installation — one concealed transom closer unit (Adams Rite ARC51N) and arm fitted into the transom head; closing and latching speeds set.
- Also — the pair of walkway doors with turn-to-open escape furniture checked while on site.
- Handover — door left in good working order, self-closing and latching.
School and commercial door repairs in Gloucestershire
Commercial Door Maintenance and Security Ltd covers Tewkesbury, Gloucester, Cheltenham and the rest of the county for schools, retail and offices, with concealed closers for the common aluminium door systems carried as stock. A photograph of the door head and the leaf edge is enough for us to confirm the closer and quote the same day.
