Waukegan is the largest city in the northern part of the area we serve, with an industrial heritage, a lakefront and a civic and institutional downtown. Its commercial doors range from heavy steel service leaves in industrial buildings to glass entrances on the lakefront and civic premises.
Scale changes the nature of door work. A city with industrial buildings, institutional premises and a downtown has properties with many openings each, and the failures on those properties are frequently shared rather than individual. The same closer model installed across a building will fail on every door at roughly the same time.
That is worth knowing before specifying repair, because replacing the same under-performing component door by door is an expensive way to solve a specification problem once.
Industrial and manufacturing buildings
The industrial side of the city produces the hardest door use in the area: steel service doors struck by equipment, heavy personnel doors opened hundreds of times a shift, and rated doors in plant rooms and stairwells that lose their hardware to convenience.
Repair decisions turn on the condition of the frame. A leaf can be replaced repeatedly, but if the frame has been pushed out of line by impact, the new leaf will suffer the same damage. Correcting the frame and, where damage recurs, protecting the impact point is the repair that reduces the call rate.
- Steel door and frame repair for industrial and manufacturing premises.
- Heavy-duty hardware specification for high-cycle personnel doors.
- Rated door repair at plant rooms, stairwells and separations.
- Service and back-of-house door replacement.
Civic and institutional building entrances
Civic and institutional buildings are public buildings, and their doors have to work for anybody who arrives. That means closing without requiring strength, latching without a push, and hardware that is operable by people with limited grip.
They also carry substantial quantities of rated doors at stair and corridor enclosures. The most common findings there are propped leaves, disconnected closers, missing or painted-over identification, and latches that no longer engage after years of being pulled shut.
Lakefront entrances exposed to wind
Buildings on an exposed lakefront elevation take wind-driven weather on their entrances, which is where most of their door problems begin. Thresholds lift, seals perish, and closers are adjusted to compensate for a door that is being held or pushed by wind.
The correct approach is to specify for the exposure: a closer suited to the leaf and the wind load, proper drainage and sealing at the threshold, and a frame in sound condition so the loading has somewhere to go.
Downtown retail and mixed-use buildings
Downtown and mixed-use buildings combine storefront entrances with common access to upper floors. The same opening is used by customers during the day and by residents or office tenants outside those hours, which puts conflicting demands on the closer and the latch.
Where a door has been adjusted to suit one user group, the other adapts around it, and the adaptation is usually to force the door. Returning the opening to a properly aligned state with correctly sized hardware is what stops the cycle.
Codes, jurisdiction and what we will not claim
Building and fire codes are adopted and amended by each state and enforced locally, and the requirement that governs a rated opening is set by the authority having jurisdiction for its address. Illinois and Wisconsin requirements are not the same, and within Illinois they vary by municipality.
We do not state a code requirement for a building we have not assessed, and we do not transfer a requirement from one jurisdiction to another. [Insert source: adopted code editions and local amendments for Waukegan and Lake County]
Hours and 24-hour emergency call-out
Office hours are Monday to Friday 08:00 to 17:00 and Saturday 09:00 to 17:00, with Sunday closed. Emergency call-out is a separate service available 24 hours a day, including Sundays and holidays, for doors that have failed, been forced or will not secure.
Call (224) 833-4828 or (262) 277-9190, or email info@accuratecommercialdoors.com. Emergency attendance is not the same as office hours, and we state them separately for that reason.