When a High-Speed Rolling Door Is More Energy Efficient!

As material  handling  or  pedestrian  traffic travels through a facility, traditional Rolling Steel or Sectional Overhead industrial doors , that  typically  travel  no more than  12" per second ,  slowly open and close allowing expensive conditioned air to pour out.  Energy has just been wasted and plant utility costs have increased.

How do you maintain an energy-efficient environment and still enable efficient traffic flow thru your Overhead Door Openings?

A  recently  completed  study,  presented at  the   IDA  Expo this past spring, found that if an Overhead doorway is used frequently,  a High-Speed Rolling door not only allows for hi frequency traffic flow,  but can do a significantly better job of saving energy. So much so that most Hi-Speed Rolling doors used in these applications can save enough energy to pay for themselves in two years or less.

New Rules - Hi Speed Doors contribute to energy conservation!

 

Based on this new research, the 2015 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) will recognize the contribution of High-Speed Rolling doors to energy conservation.  The addition of Rapid-Operating Rolling Overhead Doors offer a new way to achieve significant energy savings and at the same time provide much better hi plant traffic flow.

The industry has always acknowledged that High-Speed Rolling doors could not meet the codes' prescriptive U-factor energy requirements. Because of the High-Speed   door   curtain's relatively thin fabric, of vinyl, or rubber composition, yet strong and tear resistant, the door U-factors approached a low energy coefficient of 1.20.

However, it   turns out that when a door is static, air leakage and U-factor are not enough to evaluate a doors overall energy performance. According to the research, when door usage and door speed are taken into consideration, U-factors and air leakage alone become much less important in determining the doors overall ability to conserve energy.

 

Hi-Speed Rapid Rolling Doors = Dynamic Doors 

Prior to this research, building codes viewed all doors as closed or static when determining energy efficiency. Now doors are   regarded as "dynamic" parts of the building. High-SpeedRapid Roll Doors, besides quickly letting traffic in and out of the building, contribute to the thermal efficiency of a building through dynamic thermal performance characteristics when the door is frequently opened and closed.The predominant benefit of a High-Speed Overhead Door is its ability to control "air exchange, or the air flow through a door opening when a door is not fully closed. When taking thermal transmittance (U-factor), air leakage, and door power usage into consideration, air exchange can be the most significant part of the total energy loss for that door.After nearly two years of research involving third-party lab testing, DASMA developed a method to demonstrate the efficiency of high-speed doors in building energy calculations.

 

Fifty-Five Cycles Make the Difference

The study showed that high-speed doors become more efficient when cycled 55 or more times per day. The crossover point is illustrated below:

While 55 is the minimum, high-speed doors are typically specified for applications requiring 75 to I 00 cycles per day. Thus, these doors demonstrate superior overall energy efficiency when meeting the demand for high-cycle operation in a building.

Energy regulating authorities (regarding sustainability) now recognize the concept of dynamic door operation along with the new regulations pending from the IECC. When a high-speed door is specified for a building, the door should comply with the new performance standard set for high-speed doors.

Therefore, the door Hi-Speed Door manufacturer should be able to supply you with opening and closing speeds, U-factor and air leakage values, as well as the annualized energy performance of the door compared to those of a conventionally operating Rolling Steel or Sectional Overhead insulated door will be your assurance of a top energy-performing product.

Thanks to building codes being up to speed on high-speed doors, building owners and facility managers will be thinking differently about how doors can contribute to sealing up tl1e building envelope.