Hormann SPU F42 Industrial Sectional Door installed at underground car park BBC Leeds

Underground Car Park BBC Leeds

ABi Garage Doors Leeds recently installed a Hormann SPU F42 industrial sectional garage door at the BBC Leeds buildings in Leeds city centre.

The Brief

The BBC building in Leeds features an underground car park which had an ageing manual folding industrial door. The door was very big and heavy and as a consequence of the amount of traffic and difficulty in operating the door, it was opened each morning and only closed at the end of each day. The BBC wanted to replace the door with a fully automated product that would automatically open and close to allow vehicles in and out of the car park.

It would need to be robust enough to accommodate the amount of operations that the volume of traffic would necessitate and because there are sound studios located directly above the car park any replacement door would need to have very low sound levels when opening and closing. The car park had very limited headroom but there were a number of higher sized vans and broadcast vehicles that required access so the maximum drive through height needed to be maintained.

Our Solution

We proposed a number of possible solutions to the client to start with but a site survey soon narrowed down the choice, as any new door would need to take up very little headroom to make sure that the drive through height was kept to a maximum. The Hormann SPU F42 industrial sectional door was finally selected as the best option as along with its extremely high levels of security and reliability, it is available with a low headroom kit. This would ensure that the maximum drive through height was available and all the relevant vehicles could still gain access. The Hormann SPUF42 has a number of extra options available and in this instance we decided to upgrade the springs, rollers and cables to provide maximum durability and near silent operation. As a consequence of the high volume of operations per day we also specified a Hormann heavy duty motor. The installation utilised a Hormann RBM2 radar detector to provide the automatic vehicle detection and opening of the door.

The Installation

Underground Car Park BBC Leeds Side View
The installation work had to be scheduled precisely as the fitting of the door effectively closed access to the car park. We also had to be careful that our installation, or more specifically, any noise we made, did not interfere with any of the broadcast or sound recording work that would be going on in the studios above the car park. This meant that at times our engineers would need to listen to the live broadcast on a portable radio and ensure that any particularly loud noises would not occur during a presenter’s speech.

The doors were installed and commissioned on schedule with no interruptions to the BBC’s broadcast schedule.

For more information on industrial doors and multiple use access solutions why not contact a member of our dedicated trade department.