Garage Doors

The Safety Aspects Of An Automatic Roller Garage Door

We have all come across sites selling so called premium insulated roller doors for around £500 or less. Look a little closer and it is obvious they are an unbranded imported product and generally of inferior quality.

Roller garage doors vary in price due to a number of reasons. On the face of it, these doors may look the same as a more expensive product in terms of their appearance, however vast differences are seen with the quality of the components used to manufacture the doors.

Inferior roller garage doors will often use cheap parts such as cheap motors, thin gauge aluminium in the door lath etc and not include safety features making them non compliant with EU regulations for safety.

The main safety features to look for when purchasing an automatic roller door that has remote control operation are that it includes one of the following;

Insulated roller doors

The leading edge of the door should have an inbuilt sensor called a “bottom rail safety edge” that will stop the door automatically if it senses an obstruction. Additionally, doors over 9m2 should have a safety brake fitted as standard to stop the door dropping should the motor fail for any reason.

Single skin roller door

The control box & motor should have a feature that monitors the amount of force required to operate the door on a day to day basis. This feature will sense an obstruction by recognising the door load has increased and instantly stop the doors operation.

The only exclusion to the above regulations is for electric doors that operate via a hold to run button. This only applies if the operator can see the door at all times during operation of the door.

All Gliderol roller doors have one of the above functions as standard making them fully compliant with the relevant regulations.

VERY IMPORTANT

Photo cells as a stand-alone safety feature even if it forms a grid across the opening do not comply with EU standards.