Special-Lite Manufactures Interior and Exterior Doors for Medical Facilities
Like all the diagnostic and treatment tools at your disposal, your facilities can contribute to the care, recovery, and safety of your staff and patients. Hospital and related building design and operating practices can enhance the patient experience and employee productivity. And yes, even interior and exterior doors have a role to play in this experience.
CONSIDER JUST A FEW OF THE FACILITY-RELATED CHALLENGES YOU FACE ROUTINELY:
- Environmental infection control
- Maintenance and repair costs
- Energy consumption
- ADA compliance
Now consider how Special-Lite interior and exterior doors for hospital and medical facilities can help alleviate some of these concerns.
ENVIRONMENTAL INFECTION CONTROL
The very perception of cleanliness can influence the patient experience. Meanwhile, true infection control is a multi-tactic initiative. Your environmental services staff carries a good deal of the responsibility for many of these tactics including surface cleaning. And while horizontal surfaces are most receptive to infectious agents, some vertical surfaces, such as doors, need frequent cleaning due to heavy use.
Our door design and construction helps by resisting normal wear and tear. The sealed design of our fiberglass doors, for example, creates no safe haven for germs. The scratch-resistant and dent-resistant surfaces of our FRP/Aluminum hybrid doors are easy to clean. This design doesn’t permit the buildup of smudges that could conceal infectious agents or create poor perceptions of cleanliness. In addition, we have doors hold up under the use of heavy-duty cleaning agents that could compromise the finish of other doors.
MAINTENANCE AND REPAIR COSTS
Wear and tear on doors is normal. But not all doors are created equal. We designed our first doors for the rigors of use in schools. Our doors are stronger than the roughest students! That means they can hold up to the use and the abuse of your facility.
The key is our highly engineered approach which gives our doors flexible strength and uses the highest quality of materials. These materials are designed to resist dents, scratches, broken hinges or any other problems that plague other doors. Our construction materials (fiberglass, aluminum, and fiber reinforced polymer) will never rust like hollow metal doors and frames.
All that means far fewer maintenance calls and near zero repair or replacement costs.
ENERGY CONSUMPTION
By their very nature, doors are meant to both open and close. And that opening and closing has an influence on ventilation and, therefore, the heating and cooling loads of your facility. When closed (a majority of the time) doors also have an impact on your energy usage.
You are familiar with R-factor or R-values which describe the insulating capability of materials. Here, Special-Lite doors offer similar values to other doors. But ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Ventilation, and Air-conditioning Engineers) also has established standards for the U-value of doors. U-value describes the rate of heat loss or heat gain from one space to another as defined by the door barrier. Here, lower values are better and indicate that such heat loss or gain is minimized.
For most doors, ASHRAE has established target U-values no higher than 0.77. Independent laboratory testing confirms that standard Special-Lite doors exceed the standard requirements with values ranging from 0.13 to 0.63.
Yes, even doors have an influence on the way energy is consumed in your facility. And Special-Lite doors give you the greatest advantage in reigning in your energy costs and achieving your sustainability initiatives.
ADA COMPLIANCE
You know that the force required to open and close doors can have a direct bearing on the use of these doors by individuals with disabilities and with your compliance with associated law. That means all doors, not just the ones with automatic openers and closers.
According to the ADA National Network (https://adata.org/factsheet/adjusting-doors-access): “Doors present some of the most common accessibility issues. They may be too ‘heavy’ and require too much force to open. Heavy doors are especially difficult for people with disabilities and seniors with limited upper body strength and/or skills in using their hands. They may close too quickly for some people to pass through easily.”
This means that the weight of a door can influence accessibility by prospective patients, employees, and guests.
Find a Rep
We go to market through independent manufacturers representatives. Product distributors and contractors, if you wish to purchase our products, this is your starting point.