Problem Solved, or is it?
Brent Friesen president from Acro Aluminum takes on industry door challenges.
In the coming episodes I want to share about the innovations and discoveries we’ve made within the glazing industry: some of the difficult things we’ve learned and the successes we’ve worked hard to accomplish. I want contractors and developers to be aware of industry innovations to address their building challenges. I want to help people understand what goes into the complex glass buildings they are working in, shopping at, and living beside. As I’ve been learning lots, I’ve found there isn’t much information about glazing easily accessible, so I wanted to create a space that documents Acro Aluminum's innovations and sheds light into the glazing industry. Join us along the journey as we discover, create and dream.
Current Innovation - development of a door. Sounds simple? Read on…
Why focus on a door?
The Vancouver market has a very basic commercial door that is expensive and has a long lead time. We’ve also looked into sourcing doors from Europe, but this means getting something outside the market with a very different hardware set. This would be difficult to adapt to meet the BC requirements. This was the motivation to create something new.
Discovery: North America needs a door that meets and exceeds industry requirements.
Acro Aluminum isn’t the only company facing this problem. This challenge needs to be fixed and could be an opportunity to innovate within the glazing industry.
Needed requirements: Improvements needed in: thermal performance, and decreased air and water penetration. Ability to adapt and meet the specifications coming from building projects.
Our goal is to come up with something that's very simple, efficient and exceptionally effective.
Attempt ONE
In 2021, we tried the simple route of asking a door designer to draw one up for us. He designed one, which was similar to what was on the market and we started building a mockup. We realized that it was clumsy and wasn’t a fit for what we were looking for. So we abandoned the idea and the cost of creating a door and put the whole project on pause.
At GlassBuild 2022 in Las Vegas and we ran into a brilliant designer who had developed some very high performing window systems. After the conference, my father Bruce, who is my business partner, and I had a conversation and we decided it was time to resurrect the door idea and explore the opportunity to meet this leading designer. It was time to tackle the door problem again.
A Great Partnership
In meeting the designer, we discovered that he had been frustrated with doors already. In the last 15 years there had been little improvement or development. He agreed to partner with us and so the dreaming and designing began.
We settled on a final design, and then the challenge was to source materials. But let’s go back to the specifics.
The Process
My childhood reading was filled with the science experiment books, “How Things Work” and this furthered the innate desire to figure out how the world works around me. Today, I still love to learn how things are designed and figuring out a door for the glass industry while working with technical engineers is something I enjoy.
I've been looking at the doors in the industry and specifically what’s happening with aluminum doors. Here is my McDonalds version of what I can gather of the history of aluminum doors. Designers adapted an aluminum tube with a screw spline or shear blocks so it could be screwed together creating a door frame. The structure worked great but the thermal performance was poor. To fix this problem they attached an insulation layer to the exterior of the door. To get better performance and durability they removed the insulation and instead split the aluminum and crimped in a nylon thermal break at the middle of the door. This appears to be the most popular design currently. The trouble is the nylon is difficult to insert. You also need a very thick door to get high performance.
Learning from this old system, our first door design was a good start but we knew we could do better.
Current Design
I don't want to give too much away but we've moved away from the traditional method and created something that is a sleek design that meets our goals.
With our current design one of the innovations is to move the structure of the door away from the exterior tube and into an interior beam. Then we wrapped the exterior in an insulating layer and exterior aluminum cladding.
Not only does Acro Aluminum's design improve the door’s performance of water and air penetration (see testing results HERE), it gives us the advantage to easily replace the exterior cladding. Aesthetically it also is simple to paint or change the finish. Furthermore, the pieces are not complex and not very big. This innovation feels like a massive improvement of what the industry is currently providing and we believe is a great product. This innovation feels like a massive improvement of what the industry is currently providing and we believe is a great product. We achieved our goal of a simple, efficient and effective door.
What now?
I'm really looking forward to attending BuildEx in Vancouver and learning from the seminars on what's happening in the building industry; specifically in the areas of thermal performance and building code.
Check out Episode 2 for the next part of the story.
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