The huge selection of Doors to choose for your building can be overwhelming.
So which Door is suited for your situation?
What are the pros and cons of those Doors?
And the most important: which Door suits my situation?
Today we will take a closer look at one of our most flexible and best-selling products: the Folding Door.
Functionality of a Folding Door
The most obvious difference anyone can see at first glance is the direction a Folding Door is opening.
The most other commonly used Doors open vertically, the most widely used type being a Sectional Door.
Their name already explains that the Door is divided into multiple Sections, which then open vertically.
Whereas a Folding Door opens horizontally and not vertically. This is the first major difference to other types of Doors, which also makes it look better in comparison.
As you can see in the video, the Folding Door is divided into multiple "wings".
Those wings are the single elements which make up the Door. They fold together on the left or right side of the Door, which ultimatley gives it the name.
Optically similar to an accordeon, the elements fold together and open the entrance to the building.
There are special versions of Folding Doors, such as Sliding Folding Doors.
Other than a Folding Door, the Sliding Folding Door first slides its wings to the side, and only folds them together at one side of the entrance.
You can find more about the details and a proper demonstration of their functionality in our videos.
This way of opening the Door does not only look better, it also saves a lot of space inside the building.
Other Doors require you to mount rails, the drive and other parts on the ceiling, whereas with a Folding Door the entire space inside the building stays untouched.
This allows the owner of a building to make full use of the room inside their building.
But the Folding Door also offers another significant advantage:
Due to its way of opening to the sides, there is no person at risk who might be situated underneath the door.
This gives you much more freedom to design your door in whatever way you choose, since there are no strict regulations concerning the protection of workers or other people.
Therefore Folding Doors offer the option to use real glas instead of plastic, which is forbidden for other Types of Doors because of its weight.
Hence architects and other of our clients love Folding Doors for their almost unlimited design options. Especially for modern building where a lot of glass is required on the surface, it provides a great option.
But also in the area of Industrial Doors natural light from outside the building is often demanded for the inside of the building.
The Door itself can thereby be fully integrated into the buildings facade.
It's function forms the design and lets the door be optically unifided up with the building, adapting to all the customer's needs.
There are many different types of claddings you can use, among them even real wood.
Construction of a Folding Door
Another differentiation compared to other Doors is the way a Folding Door is constructed.
Long-lasting aluminim or steel frames are used here to allow for a robust and solid construction.
This allows Folding Doors to be used for up to 30 years and often even much longer.
What makes this way of constructing the Doors unique is that there are hardly any spare parts used.
Thus the Folding Door does barely need any form of maintenance even after many years of daily use. Compared to other Types of Doors, it makes the Folding Door much more cost-efficient.
This construction with strong materials allows also to integrate very large parts with glas only into the Door, which is a popular choice for architects.
The insulation values of real glas combined with thermically insulated profiles in the rest of the Door creates much better energy efficiency for the overall building compared to other Doors.
In particular triple glazing allows Folding Doors to reach great insulation values and are thus specifically available also with thermically insulated profiles.
This energy efficiency makes Folding Doors also very cost-effective in the long run for cooled or heated areas in buildings.
Folding Doors also offer huge variety of floor connections to choose from to fit exactly with the building and the local environment.
This makes sure that not only function, but also the design of the Door is perfectly suited to your needs.
Areas of operation for Folding Doors
The only part where Folding Doors have more variety than in their design options are the areas in which you can use them.
Because of their durability and long-lasting construction, Folding Doors are a popular choice for Fire Stations or other building of Critical Infrastructure.
They thus play an important role for all kinds of buildings around disaster protection and serving the community.
Folding Doors are also often used for Road Administrations or in any case where protection of specialized vehicles is required.
Through the Door's horizontal way opening you can easily fit special vehicles with more height than usual into the buildings. The clever construction needs no guarding rails or other elements that have to be placed inside the building such as with other doors.
The risk of vehicles bumping against the door is substantially reduced with a Folding Door. With the alternative way of opening the door remains visible for the driver in the side mirrors or the rear-view mirror.
Another popular area is in aviation hangars for planes or helicopters since Folding Doors can withstand high velocity wind loads.
But also Folding Doors have their limits and can't be recommended for every situation.
If you need really rapid opening of your Door, our specially for this purose developed High-Speed Doors will be better suited for your.
Or in cases where difference in temperatures inside and outside the building can be high, such as refrigerated warehouses. Other Doors like our ISO 80 also provide great insulations values and it should be compared how they fit your situation.
Ultimatle there will be one factor that will mainly determine whether a Folding Door suits your building or not: your needs and your situation
Depending on what exaclty will be demanded and how your building will be designed, Folding Doors can be the perfect solution or some other type of door.
To find out, our experts will help you to find the right type of door.