The standard warehouse door
Commercial sectional steel doors in Ottawa
A sectional steel door is what most Ottawa and Gatineau warehouses, shops and service bays run on: steel panels hinged together, lifted overhead on a track, held by a torsion spring. What separates a five year door from a twenty year door is gauge, insulation and how the hardware was specified on day one.
What is a commercial sectional steel door?
A sectional steel door is the standard warehouse door: horizontal steel panels hinged together, lifted overhead along a track on rollers, counterbalanced by a torsion spring above the opening. Each section is separate, so a damaged panel can be replaced on its own.
The panels are the whole point, and they are the practical difference from a rolling steel curtain. A forklift catches the second section, you replace the second section. The sections above and below it were never involved, so the door keeps its shape and the repair stays small. That is why sectional steel is the default in a building where things move through the opening all day.
Track configuration is decided by the building, not by preference. Standard lift generally wants somewhere around 14 to 18 inches of headroom above the opening, and backroom equal to the door height plus roughly two feet. Low headroom track cuts that requirement by splitting the drums and running a second set of cables. High lift and vertical lift push the door further up the wall to free the ceiling for a crane, a mezzanine or a light rack. Headroom, backroom and side room get measured before anyone quotes, because getting that wrong is not a change order, it is a different door.
Which steel gauge is right for a commercial door?
Gauge runs backwards: the lower the number, the thicker the steel. Light commercial doors are commonly 24 gauge. A bay where pallet jacks and forklift mirrors touch the door wants 20 gauge skins, which take a knock instead of recording it.
Gauge describes one steel skin, so read the whole panel before you compare two quotes. A non insulated pan door is a single skin with a formed back. A sandwich panel is two skins bonded to a core, and two thinner bonded skins are stiffer than one thicker skin standing alone. When a supplier writes insulated 24 gauge on a quote, the useful question is whether that number is the exterior skin, the interior skin, or both, because the three answers are three different doors.
Wind load is the other half of the gauge question, and it is a code question rather than a preference. A wide opening on an exposed elevation may need a heavier gauge, extra struts across each section, or windlocks in the track to meet the load the drawings call for. That gets confirmed against your building and your opening, which is one of the reasons a commercial door is priced after a site visit rather than over the phone.
Does an unheated warehouse need an insulated door?
For heat, no. In a bay you never heat, R value buys you nothing you can measure. What a sandwich panel still buys is a stiffer, quieter, stronger door, because two steel skins bonded to a core flex far less across a wide opening.
If the space is heated, the number matters, and so does the way it is quoted. Panel R values are measured at the centre of the panel, not across the installed door, so the figure on a brochure ignores the section joints, the perimeter seals and the plain fact that the door stands open for part of every shift. A polystyrene core lands in the lower part of the range for a given panel thickness. A polyurethane core, foamed in place so it bonds to both skins, rates higher at the same thickness and stiffens the panel while it does it.
For a heated shop, spend in this order: seal the perimeter and the bottom of the door first, then shorten the time it spends open, then buy panel R value. A high rated door on a bay that stands open twenty minutes at a time is insulation you paid for and are not using. That order also tends to be the cheapest of the three to act on first.
Where do lite panels help, and where do they cause problems?
Lites help where a driver needs to see the yard, or where a bay would otherwise be lit all day. They cost insulation, security and impact strength. The fix is placement: glazing belongs in the top section, above the height anything hits.
Every lite is a hole in whatever envelope the door had. In an insulated door, a full row of single pane acrylic gives back a real share of the panel rating, so specify insulated glazing if the heat bill is the reason you bought the door. Where the opening faces a street or a back lot, clear glazing at standing height shows the inside of your building to anyone who walks past, which is why frosted, obscured or wire reinforced glazing is a common commercial answer.
Impact is the part people discover later. Acrylic and polycarbonate flex and usually survive a knock. Tempered glass does not flex, it goes, and then you have an open panel until the replacement arrives. A lite in the second section sits at forklift mast height and at the height an arm can reach through. In the top section it is above both of those and still does the job you bought it for.
What hardware upgrades does a high cycle sectional door need?
Count the cycles first. A standard torsion spring is rated near 10,000 cycles, one open and close each. A bay running 30 cycles a day burns that inside a year, so the spring goes first, then the rollers, then the hinges.
High cycle springs are sold in steps, commonly 25,000, 50,000 and 100,000 cycles, and the step is picked from your real traffic rather than a guess, so it is worth counting a week of openings before anyone specifies one. Oil tempered wire and a heavier shaft belong in the same conversation. Steel ball bearing rollers replace the nylon ones, because a nylon roller under a heavy commercial section is the part that fails first and takes the track with it when it does. Hinges step up in gauge, and wide sections get struts so the panel does not bow when the operator pulls on it. If you want the mechanics in plain language, what a torsion spring cycle rating means is written out in full.
Two more things get sized alongside the hardware rather than after it. The bottom bracket carries the full cable load and stays under spring tension even when the door is open, which is why it is the one part on a commercial door nobody untrained should put a wrench on. And the operator has to match the door weight and the duty cycle it will actually see, including whether the building has three phase power at that wall.
How long should a commercial sectional door last before it needs replacing?
Judge it by cycles and by the panels, not by the calendar. A door running 10 cycles a day in a heated shop can hold up 15 to 20 years. The same door at 60 cycles a day in a salt and slush bay can be finished in five.
Three signs say replace rather than repair. The bottom section has rusted through where it meets the slab and fasteners no longer hold in it. Two or more sections are bent enough that the door binds in the track, so every new dent now costs a section. Or the pattern itself has changed: you are buying a section a year, and the running total has drifted past what a properly specified door would have cost once.
One more reason has nothing to do with wear. If the operation changed, the door is wrong even while it is sound. A bay now running 80 cycles a day, a building that needs the ceiling cleared for a hoist, or a shop that started heating a space it never used to heat has outgrown its door rather than worn it out. Our labour carries the 90 day Done-Right guarantee, and the door itself is priced after we measure the opening.
A commercial door is quoted after we measure
Gauge, insulation, headroom, backroom, cycle count and wind load all move the number, so we look at the opening before we price it. Repairs work the ordinary way: a service call is $35 to $85, free on any repair over $250, and you get a written price you approve first. HUSH carries commercial general liability insurance and WSIB coverage.
- Every major brand serviced
- Factory-trained
- Insured and WSIB-covered
Same-day service
We carry the common springs, cables, rollers and opener parts on every truck, so most repairs are one visit.
A written price before we start
You get a firm price, quoted before we start and never after, and there is no overtime fee at night or on a weekend.
Guaranteed work
Every repair is backed by our written 90-day Done-Right Promise, parts and labour included.
Factory-trained and owner-operated
factory-trained, owner-operated, and servicing every major garage door and opener brand.
Free estimate, and the service call is free with any repair over $250. Ask about financing on approved credit.
From call to fixed, in 4 steps
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Call or book
Tell us what is happening. We give you a real arrival window.
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We diagnose on-site
A technician inspects and shows you exactly what is wrong.
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You get a firm quote
We price the fix and walk you through your options, before any work.
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We fix it, you test it
Most repairs done the same visit, backed by our 90-day promise.
HUSH guarantees its labour for 90 days
The Done-Right Promise covers our labour for 90 days on every repair. If the work is not right, we come back and fix it free. Premium parts carry their own manufacturer warranty.
We can promise this because most of our repairs are done right on the first visit, so callbacks are rare. On the rare one, fixing it is on us, never you.
Need a sectional steel door specified for your bay?
Omar measures the opening, counts the cycles, and quotes the door and the hardware in writing.
Same-day, 7 days a week. Open daily, 7am to 9pm.