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Commercial Door Hardware for High Usage Environments At FBH Architectural Security, we’ve installed thousands of doors and pieces of hardware across mid and southeastern Michigan, and when it comes to selecting the right continuous hinge for high-traffic or demanding environments, there’s one name that’s earned our confidence time and again: SELECT Hinges.

Revolutionary Heavy Duty Hinges Solve Door Problems for Decades Door problems don’t solve themselves. Expect doors hung with butt or pivot hinges to wear out or need frequent adjustments and maintenance when in high-traffic, high-abuse or security applications. These hinges aren’t engineered to put up with the hundreds of opens and closes every day — the hard kicking or shoving of the push bars — or the tough fire, hurricane or security demands of doors installed today. But there’s no need to be resigned to constant hinge maintenance and replacement costs. SELECT Hinges now offers revolutionary heavy duty hinge solutions that will keep your doors swinging and closing precisely for decades — and most likely forever — without spending a minute on maintenance or a dollar on replacements.

Stop wasting your time and maintenance budget When you install butt or pivot hinges on high-traffic or maximum-security doors, expect to make constant adjustments and replacements. They don’t engineer these hinges for long-lasting performance, so they eat up your maintenance time and budget. Stop wasting both. Invest in high-quality hinges and solve your door maintenance problems for good.

The #1 choice for longer-lasting hinges arrives faster! Entrances take brutal abuse in athletic buildings, hospitals, restaurants, hotels, airports and high-traffic stores. Hard pushes, forceful slams, banging carts and luggage, jamming objects to prop doors open and other abuses have a costly toll on most hinges and maintenance budgets.

Ever watch a high school football team go through the school’s back door to reach the practice field? Those young players don’t care about the door, its hinges or hardware. All they care about is getting outside as fast as they can, punishing anything in their path.

Florida Building Code is one of the most rigorous in the U.S. When Hurricane Andrew devastated Florida in August 1992, it did $23.4 billion of damage. As this Category 5 storm hit landfall, it had 1-minute sustained wind speeds as high as 165 mph and a gust as high as 174 mph. Andrew caused more structural damage and destruction than any other hurricane in Florida’s history and broke all insurance loss records.

You can find commercial doors installed in retail buildings, schools, hospitals, municipal, government and office buildings and manufacturing facilities. Typically, they are made with more durable materials than residential doors, including wood, steel, glass, fiberglass and aluminum and glass.

Which hinge is best for your door? Do you need to replace a worn-out door hinge? Or are you writing hinge specs for the entryways in a new building or an addition? The easiest decision may be to go with the hinge design you are most familiar with, but that hinge may not be the one best suited for your entryway. It may cost you more money in maintenance, repairs and replacement. Here are some tips on what to consider before making your final hinge selection.

Make jobs go smoother with SELECT’s new BILTⓇ app, multi-language installation instructions and installer-inspired tools. There is one thing you should know when you are installing a SELECT geared continuous hinge on your new construction or existing door — once you mount the hinge, it won’t need any attention for decades. You will likely retire long before anyone considers replacing it! Because you are installing such a long-lasting product, SELECT makes sure your job goes quickly and easily.

When installing or retrofitting hinges on your EFCO®, Kawneer® or Special-Lite® entrances, the cheapest choice is rarely your biggest cost-saver. To truly save money you need a hinge that will last longer, require less maintenance and reduce your costs from day one.  Your solution — SELECT concealed geared continuous hinges. 

Jim Handschuh is president/owner of Doorwares Associates, Inc. located in Green Lane, PA. His father John founded the company in 1983 and Jim began learning the business from the ground up in 1988. He is a Certified Institutional Locksmith and is among SELECT Hinges original representatives. As one of our most experienced installers, we asked Jim to share his tips to help make your job faster and easier. Aaron McElrath has been the Eastern Regional Sales Manager for SELECT Hinges since 2014. He assists 10 different sales agencies covering 28 states.  Learn more>> While Jim’s and Aaron’s tips are written for retrofitting a door with an SL57 Full Surface Geared Continuous Hinge, many of the tips are applicable for new installations of other SELECT geared continuous hinge models. Read on – your day will go much smoother!

The newest edition of the National Fire Protection Association standard, NFPA 80 2019, regulates the installation and maintenance of fire doors used to prevent the spread of fire and smoke within, into, or out of buildings. The regulations continue to mandate annual inspections to meet local building, fire or life safety codes. Passing the inspection is especially important to hospitals and health care facilities that are accredited by The Joint Commission and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), a critical factor in receiving Medicare reimbursements. Also, many insurance companies require NFPA 80 compliance before they underwrite commercial buildings.

Nothing chills the hearts of school administrators and maintenance managers more than news of another mass school shooting in America. These dreadful acts of violence have changed the mindsets of school district leaders across the country. Tighter security. Greater protection. Closer collaboration with local law enforcement. Our nation’s school districts are more watchful, more mindful of every entryway.

In conversations I’ve had with behavioral health and hospital facilities managers, they know that their inpatient entryway doors need to be ligature resistant. But their concerns heighten when The Joint Commission, an independent not-for-profit organization that accredits and certifies U.S. health care organizations and programs, cites them for door safety problems. These risks must be eliminated within 30 days of notification. If the patient safety problem isn’t fixed, the facility will face fines and the potential cancellation of Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements. That elimination of funding can and has led to facility closures. So how can they easily bring their entryways in compliance?

Jesse Garcia, Jr. at Addax Locksmith Company in Brownsville, Texas, has been installing and repairing locks for 24 years. David Eubank, manager and training manager at A1- Locksmith in Tarrant County, Texas has been a locksmith for 39 years. When you work as many decades as these two locksmiths, you see and solve a lot of security issues. You find ways to install and rekey locks more efficiently. Fit more jobs in a week. The challenge for Jesse and David is finding ways to augment their bread-and-butter locksmith jobs with new income streams that can grow their business. They’ve found a way and it’s making their customers happier. We asked them to share their trade secrets with you:

The most experienced locksmiths I know tell me, “If I can finish an installation or repair faster, I can fit more jobs in my schedule and make more money that week.” The challenge for them is how to shave minutes off each job. Here at SELECT, we heard what installers were saying and came up with four new time-saving products to add to their toolboxes.

The standard for fire door safety NFPA 80 2016 Standard for Fire Doors and Other Openings Protectives is the most current national standard. This latest edition continues to mandate annual inspections to meet local building, fire or life safety codes. NFPA 80 compliance is required for accreditation by The Joint Commission and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and to receive Medicare reimbursement. Many insurance companies also require NFPA 80 compliance before they underwrite commercial buildings.

It’s not enough anymore to have a “green” building. It’s now all about “high-performance buildings.” But what does that mean? It has become the latest direction in how we need to think when designing new and redesigning existing buildings. And it goes beyond just “green” and/or LEED-certified. The trend is now to develop building components and systems to interact better with each other.

Are your fire doors up to code? If they're even a few years old, they may not be. And inspections are coming soon.

One of the tragic ways patients, inmates or students seriously harm themselves is by hanging from objects hooked over door hardware. To help facilities make their doors safer, SELECT invented the TIPIT® ligature-resistant hospital tip. This low-cost, angle-cut tip covers the top surface of most brands of geared continuous door hinges so objects can't be hung over them. Recently, our inventor Timothy A. Schau, was awarded U.S. Patent Number 8,898,861 for his innovative design.

"I wish every company we dealt with were like you." I hear this, or something to that effect, at least once a week. I don't say that to brag, it's just that bad customer service seems to be more common than not in this business. So why does it happen? Because delivering great customer service is hard to do on a daily basis. But it can be easier if you recognize the signs of bad customer service.