Custom Glass Doors

Pivot doors rotate on a top and bottom pivot rather than hinges on the side jamb. The pivot point sits a few inches in from the door edge, which means as you push the door open, the lead edge moves toward you while the trail edge moves away. The result: wider clear openings (no hinge swing area lost), much heavier door sizes possible (up to 12 feet tall in some hardware systems), and a distinctive opening motion that reads as architectural.

We install three main pivot systems in NJ. FritsJurgens (Netherlands) is the premium spec — fully concealed within the door slab, hydraulic damping, soft-close in both directions. Used in high-end residential entries and luxury retail. Crane Composites is the workhorse — visible top and bottom pivot housings, simpler mechanism, lower cost. Used in mid-market commercial. Dorma (now dormakaba) RTS88 is the floor-recessed pivot for very heavy commercial doors — common in lobbies and parking garage interfaces.

Glass for pivot doors is always tempered, often laminated, often low-iron (Starphire) for true clarity. Standard residential glass thickness: 1/2 inch tempered. Commercial pivot doors: 3/4 inch tempered or 1/2 inch laminated. We fabricate the glass with the patch fittings (top, bottom, and lock corner) factory-cut to the pivot manufacturer's spec — there's no field-modifying pivot glass.

Frameless office doors are 3/8-inch or 1/2-inch tempered glass slabs with edge polishing, top and bottom patch fittings, side hinges (or pivots), and a glass-mounted lockset or pull. The aesthetic is minimal — the door reads as a continuation of the glass partition wall rather than a separate element.

Hardware options: glass-to-glass hinges (CRL, Dorma) where the door pivots off the fixed glass sidelight; glass-to-wall hinges where the door pivots off a structural wall or column; or full pivot mounting top and bottom. Locksets are usually patch-mounted at the lock edge (cylinder lock with deadbolt or thumb-turn). Pulls range from simple round bars to architectural ladder pulls in brushed stainless or matte black.

Sizing limits: 3/8 inch tempered tops out around 36 inches wide x 84 inches tall before hardware capacity becomes an issue. 1/2 inch tempered handles 42 inches wide x 96 inches tall in most patch fitting systems. Beyond that we go to 3/4 inch tempered or laminated, with custom-engineered hardware. Frameless glass doors taller than 9 feet usually require a full-height vertical hinge stile rather than top-and-bottom patch fittings.

Single-pane 3/8 inch tempered glass delivers approximately STC 28-31 — meaning a normal conversation on one side is plainly intelligible on the other. Inadequate for executive offices, attorney-client conference rooms, HR meeting rooms, or any space requiring conversational privacy.

Stepped up: laminated 1/2 inch tempered with acoustic PVB interlayer (Solutia Saflex or Kuraray Trosifol acoustic grades) hits STC 35-37. That's enough for general conference room privacy — overheard conversation becomes muffled and unintelligible at normal speaking volume.

For executive suites and legal: dual-pane IGU with two laminated lites separated by an acoustic spacer. 5/16 laminated outboard, 1/2 inch airspace, 5/16 laminated inboard, both with acoustic PVB. STC 42-45. Used in C-suite offices in Princeton, Newark, and the Route 1 corridor where private conversation has business consequences.

Beyond STC 45 we're in specialty territory — staggered-thickness laminated, krypton-filled IGUs, full perimeter acoustic gaskets. Common in recording studios, broadcast facilities, and the rare executive build-out where someone has been burned by a glass-walled office leaking confidential conversations to the bullpen.

All commercial glass door hardware in NJ must meet ANSI A156 series standards and ADA accessibility requirements where applicable. Door pulls must be operable with one hand without tight grasping or twisting (ADA 309.4) — ladder pulls and large round bars meet this; small knobs do not. Lever handles on framed glass doors are common; pivot doors more often use horizontal pulls with patch-mounted cylinder locks.

Closers on commercial glass doors: floor-recessed (Dorma RTS88, Rixson 27) for heavy doors and lobby installs; surface-mounted top pivot for lighter commercial; concealed within the slab on pivot systems like FritsJurgens. Closer adjustment to ADA opening force (5 lbf max for interior, 8.5 lbf for exterior) is required.

Tempering and safety glazing labels: every piece of glass we install in a door is tempered to ANSI Z97.1, etched with the manufacturer's permanent ID and the standard reference, in the lower corner of the glass. Inspectors look for this. Without it, the door fails the final inspection regardless of how the glass actually performs.

Newark CBD and Ironbound — Class A office buildouts on Mulberry Street, Broad Street, and around Penn Station. Conference room glass partitions and executive office doors are the dominant scope. Frequent night/weekend work to avoid disrupting tenants.

Jersey City Newport, Exchange Place, Journal Square — heavy concentration of financial services and tech tenants. We install pivot doors, frameless office partitions, and demountable systems regularly. Many buildings have base-building guidelines we follow for hardware finishes and glass spec.

Hoboken and Hudson waterfront — mix of older converted industrial space (Maxwell Place, Hudson Tea) and new Class A construction. Older buildings often need creative jamb detailing where original brick or concrete columns interfere with frameless glass.

Princeton, Route 1 corridor, Edison — corporate office parks with frequent C-suite buildouts. Acoustic IGU executive office doors are standard scope here.

Cherry Hill, Mt. Laurel, Marlton — south Jersey office market. Less dense than the northern markets but consistent demand for office partition systems in mid-rise office buildings.