Hello

I am new here.

We need some door closers for a large old holiday house let in Scotland.

I spoke to a techie at Dorma who claims that nobody anywhere makes a closer that meets our requirements!  But is he correct?

Our thinking so far:
What we want is a door closer that you barely know is there but it does close the door for you.

We want is:
A). QUIETNESS - The door needs to close as quietly as possible
B). SLOW CLOSING (AUTOMATIC) - The door needs to close the door only very slowly on it's own.
C) FAST OPENING & CLOSING (MANUAL) - The door needs to both open and close fast if the users push it manually.
D). HIDDEN - Ideally the closer should be either 'concealed' or as hidden and inoffensive looking as possible.
E). QUALITY BUILD - The mechanism needs to be low maintenance and durable. We want these closers to still be working perfectly in 10 or 20 years time.
Budget:  £50 to £200??

Our detailed thinking is as follows:

A) QUIETNESS
Rationale: It is an old, historic house and we don't want to change the 'feel' of the house.
In order to facilitate quietness we could:
A).1. Replace the door latch with something modern, so that the door does not need to be travelling fast in order to get past the latch mechanism.
A).2. Have some sort of (intumescent?) seal to silently absorb the momentum of the door movement after it has got past the latch, (with a soft 'thunk'?!)
A).3. Have a 2-speed latch and set the latching speed (e.g. from 15° to 0°) to be slow

B) SLOW CLOSING (AUTOMATIC)
We will have both old people and young people in the house.  We dont want anyone getting injured.
We will be moving luggage, trolleys and food on trays coming in and out of roooms. We don't want the door pinging back too soon.

In order to facilitate slow closing we could:
B).1. Adjust the main sweep speed of a 2 speed closer to be slow. (e.g. 5 to 10 seconds, more??)
   But how to we make sure that this doesn't interfere if the user want to manually push it so as to close it fast, if they want to do so?

B).2. Optionally to have a THREE speed closure that has a 'delayed close' facility (e.g. between say 105° and 75°) and set the delayed close sweep to be very slow (e.g. 1 minute??)
   But will it be easy for the user to fully open and close the door fast?

C) FAST OPENING & CLOSING (MANUAL)
Rationale:
- It's very irritating for you the user to be stopped from closing a door fast when you want.
- Worse, if a closure is being forced to behave in a way that it was not designed for, it will soon get damaged and won't last.

To get clear, although for reasons of fire safety the door does need to close automatically (nice and slow) if unattended, we want users to be able to over-ride this and to both open the door fast and to close the door fast if they want to.

But Dorma seem to think that nobody makes such a device that performs like this!
Are Dorma correct?
Who else should I ask?

Many thanks

J

Best thing to fit is a swing free closer as used widely in care homes, then the door doesn't  close at all unless there is a fire alarm or you shut it manually as you would  normal domestic door. Problem is you then need a suitable fire alarm system to link the closer to......

Try other manufacturers for ideas such as:

Briton (http://www.allegion.com/uk)

FireCo (http://www.fireco.uk/)

Geofire (http://www.geofire.co.uk/)

To add to AB advice there is an acoustic free swing door closer which may be suitable if you have a domestic smoke detector.

http://www.safelincs.co.uk/door-closers/ or  http://www.safelincs.co.uk/geofire-agrippa-acoustic-door-closer/

An old pneumatic floor spring may do the job. You could add a secondary reverse valve with a low cracking pressure (is easily overcome when pushed). This would be a 'custom' manufacture/adaption and could not reasonably be done for the price your asking (50 to 200). Hope this helped a little.

Rod Fathers (Midlands Floor Springs)