A commercial door that sags, drags on the floor, or won’t quite latch is one of the most common
problems in a busy building — and one of the most fixable. The instinct is often to replace the
whole door. Usually, you don’t have to. We recently handled a round of door repairs at a
manufacturing facility in the Lincolnton area, and most of it came down to one thing: the right
hinges.

Why Heavy Doors Sag

Most doors hang on three conventional hinges, which carry the entire weight of the door at just
three points. On a heavy, high-traffic, or hard-used commercial door, those points wear out —
the door slowly drops, starts to bind against the frame, scrapes the floor, and stops latching.
Once a door sags, it only gets worse, and it drags the closer and lock out of alignment with it.

The Fix: Continuous Geared Hinges

The durable answer is a continuous geared hinge — a single hinge that runs the full height of
the door instead of three separate ones. Because it carries the load along the entire edge, it
eliminates the stress points that make doors sag, and it shrugs off the kind of cycling that
destroys conventional hinges. We installed full-surface and half-surface continuous geared
hinges, in 7-foot and 8-foot lengths, on the doors that needed them — and a sagging door
becomes a door that swings true again.

More Than Hinges

Door repair is rarely just one part. Across these openings we also replaced worn Grade 1
closers with back-check, ball-bearing hinges with non-removable pins for security, and
flush bolts on inactive door leaves — restoring each opening to full, smooth, secure operation.
The doors themselves were fine; it was the hardware that had given out.

Repair vs. Replace

This is the heart of it: a commercial door and frame are built to last, and replacing them is
expensive and disruptive. When a door isn’t working, the problem is almost always the hardware
— and replacing hardware costs a fraction of replacing the opening. Before you budget for new
doors, it’s worth having someone who knows the difference take a look.

Got a Door That Won’t Behave?

Sagging, dragging, slamming, or refusing to latch — we diagnose and repair commercial doors
and hardware throughout the greater Hickory region, and we’ll tell you honestly whether it’s a
repair or a replacement.