Count the Openings. Then Talk About Fixing Them. Speak to the coordinator: (333) 333 333
Where the door meets the low-voltage system

Access Control Hardware in Charlotte, NC

Tell us what is on the door now and what it is doing.

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The credential reader is almost never the problem

Access control faults get reported as reader faults, and they usually are not. A card presented, a beep, a green light, and a door that stays locked is a door telling you the credential system worked perfectly and something downstream of it did not. Power supply, power transfer, the strike itself, the strike alignment, or a door loop that has been pinched in the hinge since installation. Five candidates, one symptom.

The reason this matters commercially is that access control integrators and door contractors tend to point at each other across exactly this line. We work the door side of it: the hardware, the transfer, the prep, the alignment, and whether the whole arrangement satisfies egress. Where the fault is genuinely in the head end or the panel, you get told that plainly rather than billed for a morning of looking.

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Diagram of an electrified door opening showing card reader, electric strike, magnetic lock, power transfer hinge, request to exit device, door position switch, access control panel and fire alarm interface
The parts of an electrified opening, and the rule that sits over all of them: egress has to work without special knowledge, special effort, or power.
Scope

Hardware, and the egress constraints on it

Electrified hardware sits at an awkward intersection: the security requirement wants the door held shut, and life safety requires people be able to get out. Egress provisions in the adopted building and fire codes govern which arrangements are permitted, and they vary by occupancy and by which code edition the authority having jurisdiction has adopted. That is a conversation worth having before hardware is ordered. Retrofitting a compliant arrangement onto a door that was already fitted with a non-compliant one is the most expensive version of this job.

Electric strikes
Fail-secure and fail-safe, in frame preps that were often never intended for them. Alignment and keeper depth decide reliability more than the product does.
Electrified exit devices and levers
Where the lock function is in the device rather than the frame. Rated assemblies restrict this to listed product.
Magnetic locks
Powerful, straightforward, and the arrangement most likely to create an egress problem if the release scheme is not right for the occupancy.
Power transfer
Electric hinges, concealed door loops, and surface loops. The single most common point of intermittent failure on an electrified opening, and the last thing anybody checks.
Request-to-exit and position switches
Motion sensors, device-mounted switches, and magnetic contacts. Nuisance alarms are usually a switch alignment problem rather than a panel problem.
Power supplies and standby
Sized for the actual load rather than the one on the drawing, with battery condition checked, because a supply that browns out under inrush produces faults that look random.

Cost drivers on electrified work

DriverWhy it matters
Existing prepA frame or leaf already prepped for the device is a fraction of the cost of one that needs cutting, and cutting a rated assembly may not be permitted at all
Cable pathConcealed transfer through a hinge is neat and slow. Surface loop is quick and visible. The building usually has an opinion
Egress arrangementOccupancy and adopted code decide the acceptable release scheme, which decides the hardware, which decides the number

Where an access control integrator already holds the panel and the credentials, we scope only to the door and coordinate the handoff rather than proposing to replace their system.

How we work it

How an access control call runs

  1. 01
    Describe the behavior
    What the reader does, what the door does, and whether it is consistent or intermittent. Call (333) 333 333
  2. 02
    Establish the opening
    Rated or not, what hardware is fitted, how the cable currently gets across the hinge line.
  3. 03
    Isolate the layer
    Supply, transfer, device, alignment. Measured, not guessed.
  4. 04
    Confirm egress
    The proposed arrangement gets checked against occupancy and adopted code before parts are ordered.
  5. 05
    Fit and cycle
    Installed, cycled under load, and left with the finding written against the opening.
Why us for this

What you get that you would not get elsewhere

Troubleshooting in the right order
Supply, then transfer, then device, then alignment. Working backwards from the reader wastes a morning and finds the fault last.
Egress checked before hardware is ordered
The wrong release scheme is not a snag to sort out at commissioning. It is a rip-out.
Rated openings respected
Electrified hardware on a fire door assembly has to be listed for that use and field prep may not be permitted. That gets established first, not discovered mid-install.
We stay on our side of the line
Door hardware, prep, transfer, alignment. Panels, credentials, and head-end programming go back to your integrator.
Related

Other work on the same openings

Talk it through before anybody quotes it

Say whether the opening is fire rated and who holds the access control system.

(333) 333 333

Scoping call, no charge. A number given before anyone has measured the frame is a guess wearing a suit.

Request an estimate
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