A fire station must be a comfortable and welcoming home-base for the firefighters, a highly organized and efficient workplace and a significant landmark within the community. But fundamentally, a fire station is very simple — it is a house and a garage. And no item is more critical than that garage door.

Fire station doors often are the most predominant element of the building face. Open, they reveal to the community that firefighters are on the job. At night with lights shining behind them, they are a beacon to those seeking assistance. They are subjected to an inordinate amount of use and can't ever fail.

Here's a list of issues to consider in selecting, detailing and specifying apparatus bay doors.

Durability. If the doors don’t work, the trucks can’t leave. Unlike a residential garage door, apparatus bay doors go through thousands of cycles in a matter of a few years. The impact of this constant use varies depending on the type and installation selected.

There are three basic categories of apparatus bay door: overhead coiling, sectional overhead sliding and horizontal bi-parting. Horizontal bi-parting doors tend be faster and have less stress in their operation, but they usually are more expensive than other options. High speed overhead coiling doors are a viable option but typically don’t provide as many opportunities for insulation and glazing as sectional overhead doors and have a more industrial appearance. We typically specify a sectional overhead door, warranted for a minimum of 100, 000 cycles, with 3-inch rollers. If the doors are paneled, we call for double end stiles with double end hinges at each end and extended roller shafts through both hinges. We like the doors to have both a pneumatic safety edge and a beam so that the door will stop if it hits something as well as if something interrupts the beam. This is especially important the location of the beam may not always coordinate with the heights of all the bumpers on your various different apparatus. Finally, we like to specify limit switches with go/no go lights to allow drivers an opportunity to know when the doors are opened fully.

Visibility. Usually the apparatus bay is the largest part of a fire station, and the doors take up the majority of the front of the bay so they have a huge impact on the image and appearance of the building and, by extension, of the company. Most popular options for doors include aluminum panels, a mixture of glass and aluminum panels, all insulated glass in an aluminum structure or insulated steel panels.

Incorporating glazed panels into the doors not only shows off the community investment and makes the building look more open and approachable, it also provides line of sight vision from the bay to the apron. Thoughtful application of glazing, both in the doors and in the rest of the apparatus bay, can reduce energy bills and improve the quality of life for the fire fighters by supplementing artificial lighting with natural daylight. Care must be taken to design windows and glazed panels with insulated and filtering glass to mitigate problems associated with heat gain and glare as well as the degrading effect of UV light on equipment and vehicle paint jobs.

Integration. It is absolutely critical that the design of the doors incorporate the myriad details associated with their successful operation. Doors are complicated in and of themselves. So are the other items in the apparatus bay that must be coordinated with the placement of the doors. Additionally, there may be items such as clerestory windows, lights, heaters, fill lines, electrical lines, reels, jamb construction, fire suppression, among others to consider when arranging and specifying the door package.

Care must be taken to ensure that construction details support the door installation: a solid anchorage at jambs, anchor points for tracks and operator, consideration of the sill detail to facilitate drainage and maintain weather seal. Look carefully at whether doors should be vertical opening, horizontal, or combination. Controls must be plentiful and convenient. Place a bank of them at the bay entrance along the path of travel from the house, individual controls at the doors themselves, as well as remotes located within the vehicles themselves. You might want to consider adding additional receiver antennae outside to extend range.

Dependability. As your move into the construction, make sure the manufacturer/installer is a reputable, qualified and respected company that is able to stand behind their product for a number of years to come, and is able to service the product in a timely way. Consider requiring a maintenance period to be included in the bids to have the installer regularly check and perform any adjustments/maintenance at set intervals for a set period of time.

While it is clear that the choice of a door is not the only, or even the most, important decision that you will make in the design and construction of your new fire station, it is one that you must devote a full measure of consideration to. If you do, you will be rewarded by never having to think about it again; if you don’t you will think about little else until the problems are solved.

Nestor Melnyk, AIA, LEED AP, Principle; David Sweeney, AIA, Project Manager; and John Noble, AIA, LEED AP, Associate, are with Michael Schuster Associates.

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