Commercial Door Hardware in Buffalo, NY

The parts of the door that actually fail

Doors rarely fail. Hardware fails. A well-made hollow metal door will outlast the building around it, but the closer, the latch, the hinges and the seals wear out, go out of adjustment, or get specified wrong in the first place.

We supply and fit the full range of commercial door hardware: Grade 1 panic exit devices, surface and concealed closers, mortise and cylindrical locksets, continuous and ball-bearing hinges, kick plates, thresholds and weatherstripping. We cross-reference brands, so if a specification calls for one manufacturer and another is available faster, we can match function, finish and grade exactly.

For buildings with more than a handful of doors, we produce a hardware schedule: every opening listed with its function, finish, keying and handing, confirmed before anything is ordered. That one document prevents most of the problems that show up on install day.

Specifier’s Guide

Getting a hardware schedule right

Function before brand

Most hardware disputes are really function disputes. Decide what each opening has to do, who can enter, who can leave, what happens in a power failure, and the correct function follows. Brand is the last decision, not the first.

Egress always wins

Whatever access control you add, people must be able to get out without a key, a code or special knowledge. Any device that prevents free egress on a required exit is a code violation regardless of how secure it is.

Fail-safe versus fail-secure

Fail-safe unlocks on power loss, fail-secure stays locked. Which is correct depends on whether the opening is a required exit and what the fire strategy says.

Get this in writing before installation

Fail-safe versus fail-secure is the decision most often disputed after the fact. Record it per opening on the hardware schedule.

Cold weather is a hardware problem

Closers that work perfectly in July can bind or fail to latch at −10°F as fluid thickens and metal contracts. Exterior openings in Buffalo need closers rated for the temperature range and seasonal adjustment, not a one-time set-and-forget.

Plan the keying before ordering cylinders

A master key system needs designing up front: who holds which key, which doors group together, and how the hierarchy expands when the building changes. Retrofitting a coherent system onto doors keyed piecemeal over ten years is expensive.

Match the hinge to the door

Hinge count and type follow door height and weight. A heavy exterior steel door on three standard hinges will sag, and a sagging door drags, fails to latch and eventually wrecks the frame. Continuous hinges solve this on high-traffic and abused openings.