Fiberglass Shelter Doors

a custom width double door on a Fiberglass Equipment Shelter from Openchannelflow In developing our line of Fiberglass Equipment Shelters, we took a lot of time to look at the most commonly used, but frequently overlooked part: the door.

Now we realized that shelter doors aren’t sexy or glamorous, and you’re right…a properly built door should just blend into the background – something you use without thinking about it. However, built wrong, and the doors of a shelter can become a constant source of maintenance and irritation.

The key to a good, molded-in door starts with the frame. In molding the frame it is important to allow for the molding of a variety of different closers, security features, etc. By extending the frame around the full door perimeter, you can ensure that the frame does not twist or wrack – potentially binding the door in the frame.

Open threshold shelters typically require that a wooden brace be shipped screwed to the doorframe to keep the threshold at the proper dimension. In open threshold shelters, if this brace is removed before the shelter is set, the likelihood of the door not sealing properly or binding in the frame is greatly increased. Our time at Tracom – an open threshold building - showed us this again and again.

consistent door and door frame on a Fiberglass Sampling Building from Openchannelflow

Next comes the door itself. Fiberglass doors can be either open or closed molded. For high duty cycle applications, RTM (resin transfer molded) doors are the standard. For lower cycle applications, such as equipment or sampling shelters, open molded doors are more common. This is partly due to the wide variety of door configurations that need to be accommodated.

Openchannelflow offers open molded 2668, 3068, 3668, 4068 doors in both single and double door configurations. These doors can also be provided in custom Dutch (split) door configurations or with extended heights as necessary.

extra wide 3668 Double Doors on a Fiberglass Equipment Shelter

For an open molded door to be consistent it should be free of warp and flat to within 1/16”. Doors that are not free of warp or flat to within this tolerance can be readily recognized…by looking at the door gasketing. If a door isn’t true, it is extremely common to see two, three, or even four different gasket thicknesses used. Again, past experience has shown this to be true.

continuous bulb gasket sealing a door on a Fiberglass Equipment Shelter from Openchannelflow

Proper gasketing should be a continuous bulb (not sponge) gasket applied to the door frame. The gasket should completely seal the door, with no light being visible at any point around the frame. This, again, is an area where poorly thought out construction can cause issues. Doors with uneven thickness are difficult to seal (much less keep sealed once the gasket is past its break-in period).

Finally, hardware selection is important to useful operation of the door. Low quality / light duty hardware can quickly fail. As a result, Openchannelflow shelers only uses door hardware from the leading suppliers in the industry. That means Schlage ball knob sets, Norton door closers, Trim-Lok gaskets, Eberhard hinges, Von Duprin panic bars, and Anemostat door louvers. By using only premium quality hardware, Openchannelflow can ensure years of trouble free use even the most demanding of applications.