All-Glass Entrance Systems in Florida.

An all-glass entrance is a door assembly in which the glass leaf is the structural element. There is no perimeter door frame. Loads that a conventional door pushes into an aluminum stile - the weight of the leaf, the torque of a closer, the pull of a lock - are instead taken directly by the glass and transferred through patch fittings or shallow rails into a floor closer, a header, or a jamb pivot. Adjacent sidelights and transoms in the same opening are usually butt-glazed with a structural silicone joint rather than separated by mullions, which is what produces the uninterrupted glass wall that architects specify this category for.

The trade still calls the category a Herculite entrance, after an early brand name for the heavy tempered glass it was built from. That shorthand is useful because it names the defining constraint: the glass has to be thick enough and strong enough to be the frame. Every downstream decision - leaf width, hardware family, closer type, whether the opening can be exterior at all - follows from that one fact.

This is a different product from an aluminum entrance door, where a narrow, medium or wide stile frame carries the hardware and the glass is an infill. It is also different from a storefront system, where the framing grid is the point. All three appear on the same jobs, frequently in the same lobby, and confusing them at bid time is one of the more common sources of a scope gap between the glazier, the door hardware supplier and the general contractor.

Almost every all-glass entrance on a commercial job is one of the following, or a combination of two of them in one opening.

Patch-fitting pivot doors

The most common configuration. Cast or machined metal patch fittings clamp the top and bottom corners of the leaf on the hinge side, with a matching lock patch on the strike side. Because the patches occupy only the corners, the leaf reads as a single sheet of glass. The bottom patch engages a floor closer set into the slab; the top patch takes an offset pivot in the header or transom. Available as a single leaf or as a pair, and it is the configuration usually meant when a drawing simply says "frameless glass door."

Rail-and-pivot doors

A shallow metal rail - tapered or square, in 4 inch, 6 inch and 10 inch nominal heights depending on the family - runs the full width of the leaf at the bottom, and often at the top as well. A bottom rail gives the closer and the lock a larger bearing surface, tolerates a heavier leaf, and gives the installer more adjustment than a corner patch does. The trade-off is visual: the rail is a visible horizontal band. Specifiers who want the cleanest possible elevation choose patches; specifiers who want the most robust daily-cycle assembly choose rails.

All-glass leaves on a power operator

A patch or rail leaf paired with a swing operator, either a low energy operator on a push-plate actuator or a full power operator on a sensor. This is the configuration that most often gets mis-bid, because the operator, its power feed, its actuator and its sensor sit across three trades. The glass leaf, its hardware and the operator have to be selected as one assembly - an operator has a maximum leaf weight and a maximum leaf width, and a heavy 3/4 inch pair will exceed some of them.

All-glass sliding entrances

Sliding leaves hung from an overhead track with all-glass sidelights, either manually operated or on a slide operator. Common at hotel and hospital entries where a swing leaf would foul the vestibule, and at retail openings where the full width has to clear.

Interior all-glass door and front assemblies

The same hardware families used on interior conference rooms, office fronts, demountable partitions and tenant entries. Because there is no wind load and no impact requirement, the interior application is where the frameless look is easiest to deliver and where thinner leaves and continuous-hinge or top-jamb closers become viable.

On a framed door, hardware is selected after the door. On an all-glass door it is the other way around: the hardware family determines what has to be fabricated into the glass, and glass fabrication is irreversible. Holes, notches, cutouts and edge polishing are all done before tempering. A tempered leaf cannot be drilled, trimmed or notched afterwards, so a late hardware substitution means new glass and a new lead time, not a field modification.

• Patch fittings. Top and bottom corner patches on the pivot side, lock patches on the strike side, and transom or sidelight patches where a fixed lite meets the leaf. Sized and specified per family; the leaf cutout must match the selected patch exactly.
• Floor closers. A cement case is set into the slab, and the closer body drops into it. This is the single most schedule-sensitive item in the scope: the case has to be located and set before the slab pour or before the topping goes down, which means the entrance hardware has to be selected during preconstruction rather than during the glazing buyout. Getting this wrong turns into slab demolition.
• Overhead concealed and top-jamb closers. Where the floor cannot be cut, or on interior openings, the closer moves into the header. This requires a header with real structure behind it and enough depth to house the body, which has to be coordinated with the framing and ceiling trades.
• Rails. Tapered or square bottom rails and matching top rails, in the nominal heights the family offers. A rail can also be the carrier for a concealed vertical rod exit device where the opening needs panic hardware.
• Locks. Bottom-rail or patch-mounted deadbolts throwing into a floor strike, center locks between a pair of leaves, and cylinder options coordinated to the building keyway. On an egress opening the lock has to be compatible with the exit requirement, which frequently rules out a simple floor bolt.
• Pulls and push-pulls. Ladder pulls, offset pulls and back-to-back pulls, through-bolted at fabricated holes. Pull selection is an ADA item as well as an aesthetic one, since it sets the operable-part height and the grasp geometry.
• Continuous hinges and header-mounted pivot sets. Alternatives to a floor closer for interior leaves, useful where slab work is impossible and the leaf is light enough.

ACG specifies from the mainstream commercial entrance hardware families and matches the glass fabrication to whichever family the project actually approves. We do not carry a proprietary line, and we do not publish a hardware model or approval number for an opening we have not yet detailed - the correct schedule comes out of the submittal, not out of a web page.

All-glass door leaves are built from heavy monolithic tempered glass, because a door is a hazardous location under the building code and because the leaf has to carry hardware loads. The nominal thicknesses in common commercial use are these:

Thickness is an engineering result, not a menu choice. It falls out of leaf width and height, glass weight, the hardware family's published capacity, the closer size, and the loads at the opening. A leaf that is too thin for its hardware will not pass the fitting manufacturer's own limits; a leaf specified thicker than needed drives weight into the closer and the header and can push the assembly past an operator's rating.

Beyond thickness, the make-up decisions that come up on most jobs are:

• Monolithic tempered vs laminated. Interior and protected openings use monolithic tempered. Exterior openings that need impact resistance need a laminated make-up, and that laminated assembly has to be covered by a product approval for the exposure - which is where many all-glass configurations run out of runway. See the HVHZ section below.
• Heat soaking. An option that reduces the risk of spontaneous breakage from nickel sulfide inclusions in heavy tempered glass. Worth specifying on large exposed leaves and on overhead or hard-to-access lites.
• Low-iron glass. Removes the green cast that is very visible in the thickness this category uses, especially at a polished exposed edge. Frequently specified on flagship retail and lobby work; it is a cost adder and it has its own lead time.
• Edgework. Exposed vertical edges on an all-glass leaf are seen and touched, so flat-polished edges are effectively standard rather than optional.
• Insulating units. An all-glass door leaf is not an insulating unit. Where the energy code drives the opening, the thermal work happens in the surrounding storefront or curtain wall, not in the door.

An all-glass entrance can be fully compliant, but nothing about the type makes it compliant by default. Two of its characteristic traits - heavy leaves and floor closers - push directly against the accessibility requirements, so the numbers have to be checked at design time rather than discovered at inspection. The governing figures in the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design are:

• Clear width. 32 inches minimum, measured between the face of the door and the stop with the door open 90 degrees. An opening deeper than 24 inches needs 36 inches minimum. On a pair of all-glass leaves this is measured on the active leaf, which is what makes a narrow active leaf in a wide pair a problem.
• Thresholds. 1/2 inch maximum height, with changes in level beveled per the standard. Relevant wherever a floor closer case, a floor strike or a recessed track raises the finish floor line.
• Operable parts. Handles, pulls, latches and locks mounted between 34 inches and 48 inches above the finish floor, operable without tight grasping, pinching or wrist twisting. A full-height ladder pull satisfies this easily; a low floor bolt as the only operable device does not.
• Opening force. Interior hinged doors and gates: 5 pounds maximum, not counting the force needed to retract a latch bolt. A heavy all-glass leaf on an aggressively adjusted floor closer is exactly how this gets exceeded.
• Closing speed. A closer adjusted so that from 90 degrees open, the leaf takes at least 5 seconds to reach a position 12 degrees from the latch. Spring hinges get their own 1.5 second minimum from 70 degrees.
• Vision panels. Where a door, gate or adjacent sidelight has glazing you can see through, the bottom of at least one glazed panel must be no more than 43 inches above the finish floor. An all-glass entrance clears this by definition.
• Power operation. Full power automatic doors follow ANSI/BHMA A156.10; low energy and power assisted doors follow ANSI/BHMA A156.19. Where the manual opening force cannot be met on a heavy leaf, a low energy operator is the normal remedy - and it has to be specified as part of the entrance, not added later.

Separately from the ADA figures, a fully glazed door needs visual marking so people do not walk into it. Building code and standard practice both treat glazing in and adjacent to a door as a hazardous location requiring safety glazing, and manifestation - a frit band, a film band, an applied graphic or the pull itself - is what makes a frameless leaf visible. We flag manifestation during submittal review because it is routinely left off frameless elevations.

All-glass entrances are specified where the entry is doing architectural work, and where daily cycle counts and the exposure both allow a frameless leaf.

• Retail and restaurant. Ground-floor tenant entries where maximum glass and minimum visible metal is the brief. Usually a pair of patch-fitting leaves inside a storefront opening.
• Hotel and hospitality. Lobby entries and vestibules, often with an all-glass leaf on a power operator inboard of an approved exterior entrance.
• Office lobbies and tenant fronts. The largest volume of interior all-glass work: building lobby entries, elevator lobby doors, tenant suite entries and conference fronts.
• Medical and dental. Interior suite entries and reception fronts, where the cleanable, gasket-free surface is a functional benefit rather than only an aesthetic one.
• Showrooms and auto dealerships. Large fixed all-glass spans with a door leaf integrated into the run.
• Institutional and civic interiors. Libraries, campus buildings and civic lobbies where egress width and panic hardware are usually the governing constraints, which pushes the design toward rails over patches.

Where all-glass is the wrong answer, we say so at bid time. High-traffic exterior openings on an exposed elevation, openings that need a rated assembly, and openings in the HVHZ where no approved all-glass configuration fits are all cases where an approved aluminum entrance, a fire-rated assembly or an impact-rated system is the correct product and the all-glass treatment moves inboard.

Florida is the reason this page has a code section. Every exterior opening in the state is governed by wind load, and products in an exterior opening need a documented approval. There are two systems:

• Florida Product Approval - the statewide route, administered by the Florida Building Commission and identified by an FL number. Each approval carries its own limitations of use, and a great many FL numbers are explicitly not for HVHZ use.
• Miami-Dade Notice of Acceptance (NOA) - issued by Miami-Dade County Product Control. This is the route generally expected inside the High Velocity Hurricane Zone, which under the Florida Building Code means Miami-Dade and Broward counties in their entirety.

HVHZ product testing runs to the county's Testing Application Standards: TAS 201 large missile impact, TAS 202 uniform static air pressure, and TAS 203 cyclic wind pressure loading. Outside the HVHZ, windborne debris regions are typically addressed through the ASTM E1886 and E1996 impact standards instead. Our NOA explainer and the approvals page go through the paperwork in more detail.

The consequence for this product category is specific and worth stating plainly: an approval covers the assembly that was tested, and nothing else. Glass make-up, leaf dimensions, hardware and anchorage are all part of the tested configuration. A frameless all-glass door is a difficult assembly to carry through impact and cyclic pressure testing, because the load path runs through corner fittings rather than a continuous frame, so the set of approved all-glass exterior configurations is much narrower than the set of approved framed ones. On South Florida exterior openings the honest answer is often that the entrance line has to be an approved framed system, with the all-glass detailing moved to the interior side of the vestibule.

We will not quote a specific approval number, wind pressure or tested configuration for an opening until we have detailed it. Publishing one before the opening is engineered is how a project ends up with a submittal rejection, and it is the kind of number that has to come from the current approval document for the exact assembly, not from a marketing page.

More all-glass entrance problems come from sequencing than from product selection. The items below are the ones that cost money when they are late:

• Floor closer cases before concrete. The case is a slab embed. It has to be dimensioned, located and set before the pour or the topping. This is a preconstruction decision that lands weeks before the glazier is otherwise on site.
• Header structure and depth. Overhead closers, transom patches and operators all need real backing and real depth. That has to be resolved with the framing and ceiling trades while the header is still open.
• Hardware schedule alignment. The all-glass entrance hardware sits in the glazing scope on some jobs and in Division 08 hardware on others. If nobody reconciles the two schedules, the opening ends up either double-bought or unbought. We surface it as part of our Division 08 scope review.
• Egress and panic hardware. If the opening is in the means of egress, the required exit device narrows the hardware family and can force a rail configuration. Better to learn that during design than during the walkthrough.
• Operator power, actuators and access control. A power operator needs a circuit, a control run, actuator locations and a coordinated access control interface. Three trades, one opening, and the commissioning date is the moment all three either line up or do not.
• Glass release timing. Fabrication is committed once the leaf goes to tempering, because holes and notches cannot be added later. Hardware approval therefore has to precede glass release.

ACG works as the single point of responsibility across that list: glass, entrance hardware, shop drawings, product approval documentation, field measurement and installation, with coordination of the operator and access control interfaces. Lead times and pricing are quoted against a real opening and a real hardware selection, from the submittal, rather than from a published range that would not survive contact with the project.

ACG installs all-glass entrance systems statewide from its West Palm Beach headquarters, with additional Florida offices in Naples and Tampa. The cities below are the markets covered for this scope. Cities with their own dedicated all-glass entrance page link to it; the remainder link to the local commercial glazing page for that market.

Cities with a dedicated all-glass entrance page

• Aventura all-glass entrances
• Boca Raton all-glass entrances
• Bradenton all-glass entrances
• Cutler Bay all-glass entrances
• Deerfield Beach all-glass entrances
• Fort Lauderdale all-glass entrances
• Fort Myers all-glass entrances
• Lakeland all-glass entrances
• Lauderdale-by-the-Sea all-glass entrances
• Lighthouse Point all-glass entrances
• Marathon all-glass entrances
• North Bay Village all-glass entrances
• North Palm Beach all-glass entrances
• Oakland Park all-glass entrances
• Orlando all-glass entrances
• Palm Beach all-glass entrances
• Palm Beach Gardens all-glass entrances
• Parkland all-glass entrances
• Pinecrest all-glass entrances
• Port St. Lucie all-glass entrances
• Riviera Beach all-glass entrances
• Sarasota all-glass entrances
• Sebastian all-glass entrances
• South Miami all-glass entrances
• St. Petersburg all-glass entrances
• Stuart all-glass entrances
• Tampa all-glass entrances
• Vero Beach all-glass entrances

Additional Florida markets covered from this hub

• Bal Harbour Village
• Bay Harbor Islands
• Bonita Springs
• Boynton Beach
• Clearwater
• Coral Gables
• Dania Beach
• Davie
• Delray Beach
• Englewood
• Florida Keys
• Fort Myers Beach
• Fort Pierce
• Golden Beach
• Gulf Stream
• Hallandale Beach
• Highland Beach
• Hillsboro Beach
• Hobe Sound
• Hollywood
• Islamorada
• Jensen Beach
• Juno Beach
• Jupiter
• Key Biscayne
• Key Largo
• Key West
• Kissimmee
• Lantana
• Manalapan
• Marco Island
• Miami
• Miami Beach
• Miami Shores
• Naples
• North Miami Beach
• Palm Bay
• Palm City
• Palm Harbor
• Palmetto Bay
• Pompano Beach
• Sunny Isles Beach
• Surfside
• Tequesta
• Venice
• Virginia Gardens
• West Palm Beach
• Weston
• Winter Haven

Not listed? The full index is on the service areas page and the locations page. We bid statewide.