Written By: Brad Campbell | July 12, 2023
Glass entry doors are a popular choice for retail storefronts and other commercial facilities due to their aesthetic appeal and ability to showcase products or services.
However, traditional glass doors are incredibly vulnerable to forced entry, which is why businesses and commercial facilities should fortify their glass entryway doors with security glazing.
With the right type of security glass or glass-like glazing protecting commercial entry doors, property owners and business proprietors can effectively prevent forced entry, as well as mitigate other security threats.
While traditional commercial glass doors offer transparency and elegance, complementing a building’s architecture and providing visibility and natural light, they are easy targets for forced entry and burglary.
Most commercial glass entry doors are made out of tempered glass, as this is required by law for commercial glass surfaces in high-traffic areas, and many property owners think that this type of strengthened glass is enough to deter would-be intruders — not true.
Although commercial tempered glass doors are four or five times stronger than standard annealed glass doors, they are designed to break.
Let us explain: tempered glass is a type of safety glass, engineered specifically to improve human safety by reducing the risk of glass-related injury when a tempered glass door or window is broken.
The key difference between tempered glass and traditional annealed glass is that, when tempered glass breaks, it crumbles into thousands of pretty much harmless, granular pieces of glass.
These small chunks of glass aren’t jagged and sharp and are unlikely to fly dangerously inwards, as broken shards of annealed glass often do.
The point of this type of safety glass is to prevent injury to humans in close proximity to windows and doors that could potentially break due to accidental impacts (this is why tempered glass is used for windows in passenger vehicles).
Criminals know that tempered glass is easily broken through by a few blows from a sledgehammer, a bat, a pry bar, or another common burglary tool, and that they’re less likely to get injured breaking through a tempered glass door than when doing so through other types of glass surfaces.
This vulnerability is a significant security concern for most businesses, as break-ins can result in theft, property damage, and potential harm to employees and customers.
Because of these security risks, it’s highly recommended that all types of businesses and commercial facilities reinforce their glass entryway doors with security glass or non-glass security glazing.
There are a couple of different ways to install security glass for commercial entry doors.
The first is to use retrofittable security glazing, such as Riot Glass®, which uses specialized framing adapters that fit into or onto the existing door framing system, holding the forced entry-resistant glazing securely in place with no need for glass replacement.
However, this is difficult to do for some types of commercial glass doors, particularly all-glass entry doors that have only slim top and bottom rails holding the glass in place.
For these types of commercial doors, we recommend using Riot Glass® AG Series doors, which replace the existing glass doors with all-glass security doors that look and function the same, with the added benefit of virtually unbreakable forced entry protection.
Commercial security glass entry doors are specifically designed to deter and prevent different types of forced entry, including:
This type of impact-resistant door glazing enhances security without compromising the aesthetic appeal of glass storefronts and commercial facilities, which is very important for certain types of businesses and facilities where it’s important to maintain a certain image.
For example, luxury retail establishments can’t use traditional burglary prevention solutions, like bars, grates, gates, and grilles, because they don’t fit with the high-end images that the retailers are trying to project.
Not only that, but things like bars and grates prevent window shopping and block out natural light, detracting from the shopping experience both inside and out.
Commercial entry doors reinforced with security glass look and feel like traditional glass entryway doors, continuing to allow full visibility and light transmission.
But, if a would-be intruder attempts to break them with blunt force, they’ll be surprised when their blows just bounce right off. This makes these doors a highly effective deterrent to forced entry and burglary, as criminals are likely to give up and move on to an easier target.
Even if a stubborn criminal continues with their break-in attempt, they’re not going to get through something as strong as Riot Glass®, which uses specific formulations of polycarbonates, acrylics, and other plastics that make it effectively unbreakable.
Commercial security glass entry doors play a vital role in protecting glass storefronts and other commercial facilities with glass entryways.
These doors offer hardened security while maintaining the aesthetic appeal of the glass — they fortify buildings without making them look fortified.
For the best in forced entry-resistant door glazing, put your trust in Riot Glass®. The specific compositions of Riot Glass® glazing sheets make them outlast and outperform comparable security glazing products out there, ensuring a long-lasting investment.
Besides protecting commercial establishments against forced entry, burglary, smash-and-grabs, looting, and active threat attacks, fortifying your property with Riot Glass® also mitigates the following security threats:
Installing Riot Glass® retrofit security glazing solutions as part of a comprehensive commercial security system ensures 24-hour protection against impacts of all types, whether from nefarious actors, inclement weather, or accidental causes.
Reinforcing your vulnerable entry doors and storefront windows greatly reduces the likelihood of financial loss due to theft and property damage, as well as helps protect employees and customers from harm.
Contact us today for a free consultation.
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