Types of folding gates and their characteristics

Folding gates are a good alternative if the design of swing gates is no longer satisfying. The main reason for replacing them is mainly that the sashes require a lot of space to open.

The main advantage of any folding gate is that it saves space both outside and inside the building. In addition, most of the folding structures are suitable for use in places where there is a lot of snow. Everyone knows how difficult it is to open swing gates after heavy snowfalls.

Folding products are of the following types:

• Sectional.
• Roller shutters.
• Harmonic.

Let's consider them in order.

Sectional doors are a set of movably interconnected horizontally located sections. Sections in doors intended for domestic use, such as a garage door in a private house, usually measure approximately 40-60 cm in height and 1.9-9.4 meters in length. Of these, gates are assembled, with a height of 1.35 to 4 meters. This is usually enough to meet the needs of the average private home resident.

The principle of operation of such gates is that the guide rails of the gates, installed on the sides of the opening, continue on the ceiling. Thus, when opening, the gate, sliding along the guides, is positioned horizontally on the ceiling above the entrance.

This design has its pros and cons:

• These gates do not occupy a useful area in front of the opening or inside, on the sides of it. The mechanism for their opening is also located at the top, on the ceiling, and modern garage owners have not yet come up with ways to store useful things there.
• Of the types of folding products listed by us, sectional ones can be recognized as the most sound and heat insulating. The panels are large enough. For them, sandwich panels are usually used, which are connected using hinges. In addition, many manufacturers of such products make the edges of the panels shaped in the form of a tongue-and-groove lock to prevent blowing and even cover these edges with a sealant. So when the gate is closed, neither cold air nor dust can enter the room.

• It is a robust and durable construction that is resistant to mechanical stress. Having installed such a product once, you will use it for a long time.
• To protect against unauthorized entry, such products are usually equipped with a gate valve - a spring bolt. It is suitable if the gate is always locked only from the inside or in the room, for example, there is another additional entrance in the garage. To close the gate from the outside, a crossbar lock with handles is installed on them, pulling on which you can close or open the gate. On the inside, a cable is attached to the handle, pulling the bolt out of the groove when turning. Such constructions are opened both by means of an automatic electric drive and manually.

• Depending on the needs of the garage owner, windows can be made in the sections, and there can also be a built-in wicket door right in the door leaf so that you can enter the room without opening the entire gate. Although this increases the cost of the design.
• Safety measures for automatic structures are that they are usually equipped with photocells: the leaf stops moving if something gets between the floor and the edge of the door.Also, some manufacturers equip sandwich panels with special devices that exclude pinching of fingers between the door panels.

The main disadvantage of such a device can be considered that the room should be spacious. Its length must exceed the height of the opening at least one and a half times, otherwise the gate simply will not fit. They are also quite expensive.

Roller shutters or roll structures consist of plastic or metal narrow slats flexibly fastened to each other. The principle of their operation is that the flexible door leaf, sliding along the guide profiles, rises and winds on a special drum located at the top of the opening inside a special box, just as it happens with roller blinds.

The advantages of roller shutters are that:

1. They are very easy to use and install: some amateur craftsmen assemble them themselves from suitable strips of metal and plastic, which can also be transparent.
2. Roller shutters are very compact, both closed and open, they do not take up space either in the garage or outside.
3. Rolling shutters are quite cheap compared to all other types of doors. In addition, they are very maintainable, both individual lamellas and the entire curtain can be replaced, the drum and the drive do not need to be changed.
4. They look neat and beautiful and cover the room well from dust.

However, the list of negative aspects of roller shutters is also impressive and their most important unpleasant property can be considered that, due to their compactness, they cannot withstand mechanical damage well, which means that they can be relatively easily hacked, even if they locked with a padlock or latch.

Also, the lamellas of such gates are limited in thickness and width, there are many of them, it is possible that gaps may appear in the attachment points, because of this, their thermal insulation turns out to be very doubtful. At temperatures below freezing, the surface of the gate can become covered with ice, making it difficult to open it. Thus, the use of roller shutters turns out to be limited, for example, to guarded garage complexes and premises, for which the vulnerability of such a design will not be critical.

"Accordion" is quite popular today. The curtain of such gates consists of vertically arranged panels, interconnected by hinges and sealed with some flexible material - rubber or fabric. A sealing strip or, for example, a nylon brush is also mounted at the bottom and top. At the moment of opening and closing, the rollers mounted on the vertical ends slide along the guide rail, which can be located both in the upper part of the opening and in its foundation.

If a guide rail (guide rail - for industrial models) is installed in the upper part of the opening, its height must be limited to 4.5 meters. Thus, open structures can be located both outside and inside the room, depending on which corners of the panels interact with the guides. The width of the opening, in this case, mainly affects the number of panels, although when the doors are folded, it narrows somewhat.

In everyday life, in residential premises, the design of doors in the form of a folding accordion has been used for a long time precisely in order to save space and eliminate the "dead zone" in the room needed to open and close the door. In turn, accordion gates have long and successfully been used in large garages, workshops of enterprises, in rooms intended for storing large-sized equipment and machinery - train depots, aircraft hangars, at industrial enterprises; but they very slowly and reluctantly enter private use as an entrance gate or garage door.

Although the design has undeniable advantages, and craftsmen successfully master their manufacture with their own hands.Recently, the number of companies that make such gates to order on a turnkey basis has been growing.

Accordingly, the advantages of the design include:

1. Such tilt-and-turn gates can be used to cover an opening of any width: the folded structure will eventually take up not so much of the opening.
2. These structures can be folded both inward and outward from the opening. The minimum space that is required in order to open the structure will be equal to the width of one sash panel. Accordingly, the resistance of the "accordion" to wind loads is much higher than that of swing gates of the same size.
3. Accordion gates are perfect in cases where it is undesirable to load the upper part of the opening: the weight is distributed so that the entire load falls on the walls only.
4. Made of suitable materials, accordion doors can provide good sound and heat insulation.

Among the disadvantages of this design can be called the difficulty of installing anti-intrusion systems: not every lock is suitable for a folding structure. In addition, during intensive use, the seal between the panels is damaged: the door design provides for a much stronger tension at the folds than, for example, for the seal between the panels of sectional doors.

Insulated products for summer cottages can be folded and folding. Their chain mechanism is very convenient and the adjustment takes place in several movements.

And in conclusion of the article, we will give a comparison of gates of different types on the example of a specific task. So, to close the opening with a width of 12 and a height of 6 meters, you can use any type of gate.

At the same time, swing or sliding gates will require at least 6 meters on each side of the opening. For sectional doors, as we remember, above the door, it is required to allocate an area the size of the opening itself for installing guide rails and a drive.

Roller shutters of this size will require a powerful drive and a fairly large box for the drum. At the same time, accordion-type gates will occupy, depending on the material, approximately one square meter to the left and right of the opening. It is important that such gates can, if necessary, be opened manually by one person sequentially on one panel-leaf, while it is simply impossible to open similar sectional or roll structures alone.

What are garage and street gates, see the next video.