Doors – they are the first thing that people see and in one way or another set an impression about an entire building or facility.

Deciding whether to depart from the traditional manual doors and upgrade into advanced automatic and revolving doors can somehow spark debates over its benefits and drawbacks. Will they require more or bigger space? Will they help ease the flow of traffic? Are these automatic and revolving doors energy efficient given that they are power driven?

Installing automatic and revolving doors largely depends on different factors including the availability of space, traffic flow, compliance to AODA or Americans with Disabilities Act standards as well as energy efficiency.

Why Are There Revolving Doors?

Here are some of the benefits of installing automatic and revolving doors in your facility:

First impression lasts. Modern and stylish doors create positive impression and add aesthetic value to the entire building or establishment.  The added convenience of automatic doors enhances user experience too. Overall, jazzed up exteriors increase business competitive advantage and help attract more clients.

Perhaps one of the biggest contributions of automatic and revolving doors is that they are capable of handling two-way traffic. This is why they are ideal for crowd magnet establishments such as the bus stations, stadiums, schools, concert halls, movie houses and other public areas.

Controlling the traffic flow coming in and out of the building is more manageable with revolving doors. As a bonus, security can also be easier to control as it can restrict tailgating more effectively than the manual doors. Thus, it is a complete package solution to common entrance facades challenges – traffic flow control and security whilst maintaining the level of comfort and user convenience.

High tech doors can save the users from the struggle of holding a manual door to open. Heat and pressure can also cause the door to suck in and becomes extra difficult to open, just imagine how aggravating that can be. But thanks to advanced door solutions, these can all be addressed easily. The elderly and differently-able users can specially benefit from the automatic door system.

Enhancing user experience and maintaining comfort at any levels can in turn drive more customers and patrons so it in essence a win-win business strategy.

Contrary to energy concerns about these power-operated doors they are actually energy efficient. Because they have tight and reinforced seals, they can greatly help in energy conservation despite the fact that they are power driven.

It takes a whole lot of power and electricity to cool the temperature of an entire building. The air leaks entering the building because of people going in and out from time to time is definitely not helping at all. These unwanted airflow and air leaks are energy-eating monsters.

In the same way during the winter, maintaining the heated air level can be as tough when the cold air rushes in and out disappointingly.

So how can these unwanted airflows be managed? Well, the solution is installing automatic doors and revolving doors. In fact when a patent for these revolving doors was submitted before, according to the application the primary purpose of these power doors was to prevent the snow, rain, wind or dust entrance. To set the record straight though, revolving doors are not airtight, they do not completely lock air out. Instead they create barriers that lessen the impact of the air pressure significantly. So when the revolving door spins open or close less amount of airflow passes through.

How big can automatic doors contribute towards energy conservation? The MIT graduate students made such an analysis of door use in the year 2006 in one building. To summarize what they found out from the study, here is what they have to say. “Applying the average Boston weather to the equation, if everyone used the revolving doors, it would have saved more than 75,000 kilowatt hours of energy –  about 1.5 percent of the total required to heat and cool the building—and prevent 14.6 tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted.” The study just further prove that automatic doors are very much energy efficient.

Automatic doors in a sense are used as air locks or filters and overall they help manage energy and power expenses. Yet if you are still concern about these power doors likely consuming high power or current. Worry no more. The automatic and revolving doors nowadays have different models that utilize low energy-consumption motors.

The challenge now is, how do you get more people to use the automatic and revolving doors? The answer is not as complicated as you might think. A research made found out that a simple and polite signage asking people to use the revolving doors can actually make a huge difference. Sounds plain and easy right? You do not have to go technical and explain energy and what not formulas. Just ask politely.

Although it is still necessary to offer other options aside from the automatic door to accommodate the special needs for people in wheelchairs or those with bulky loads, these are still building standards. But reducing these heavy, manual doors is not as bad. All in all the automatic and revolving doors are genius and efficient façade solutions. Hence, it is the right time for gentlemen and women to forget about having to hold the door open, come on it’s 2017, time to take them to a spinning instead!