An automatic entrance is the first thing customers, patients, and staff touch when they arrive — and when it stops cycling correctly, every single person who approaches it notices. We repair and install automatic sliding and automatic swing door systems across Ottawa and the Ottawa Valley: the operator, the sensors, the activation devices, and the safety equipment that make a powered door open on time and close safely.
An automatic door is not really a door — it is a small piece of motorized machinery that happens to look like a door. Inside the header above the opening sits an operator: a motor, a gearbox or belt drive, a controller circuit board, and a set of sensors that decide when the leaf moves and how fast. That machinery runs thousands of cycles a week at a busy Ottawa grocery store, pharmacy, medical clinic, or office lobby, and like any machine running that hard, it wears, drifts out of adjustment, and eventually needs service. The difference between an automatic door and an ordinary swing door is that when the automatic system misbehaves, it does so in ways that are immediately visible to the public and that can carry real safety consequences if the door closes on someone or fails to detect a person in the opening.
At Fix My Door Now Ottawa, we service and install automatic pedestrian door systems throughout Ottawa and the Valley. We work on automatic sliding entrances, automatic swing operators, and the full chain of components that surround them — overhead sensors, threshold safety beams, activation switches, and the control electronics that tie them together. We treat an automatic entrance as the complete system it is, because a problem that looks like a faulty door is just as often a dirty sensor lens, a misaligned safety beam, or a controller setting that has drifted. Diagnosing which of those it is — quickly and without guesswork — is the heart of good automatic door service.
The automatic sliding door is the workhorse of high-traffic Ottawa retail and institutional entrances, and it is the system we are called to most often. A sliding operator moves one or two glass leaves along a track using a belt driven by a motor in the header, guided by carriage rollers and an anti-riser. When a sliding door starts to hesitate, judder, or grind as it travels, the cause is usually mechanical: a worn or stretched drive belt that is slipping on the pulley, carriage rollers that have flat-spotted or seized, or debris and grit packed into the bottom guide track from a winter of slush and sand tracked in on people's boots. We strip the header, inspect the drive train, replace worn belts and rollers, clean and realign the track, and re-tension the system so the leaves glide smoothly and stop where they should.
Other sliding-door faults live in the electronics. A door that opens partway and stutters, opens at the wrong speed, or refuses to break out in an emergency points to the controller, the motor encoder, or the breakout switches in the leaves. We read the operator's fault codes, test the motor and controller, and either recalibrate the system or replace the failed board. We also handle the breakout function — the safety feature that lets sliding leaves swing open manually in an emergency — and make sure it both releases when it should and re-seats correctly afterward.
Automatic swing doors use a different mechanism: an operator mounted on the header drives a push or pull arm that swings a conventional door leaf open and eases it closed. These are common on vestibules, secondary entrances, and interior accessible doors throughout Ottawa offices, clinics, and public buildings. Swing operators come in low-energy and full-energy configurations, and the distinction matters — a low-energy operator opens slowly enough that it does not require the guide rails and presence sensors a full-energy operator needs, which makes it the right choice for most accessible entrances. We repair both: failed motors, stripped gear trains, arms that have come loose or bent, and operators that have lost their open or close adjustment and now either slam or stall partway.
A swing operator failure often shows up as a door that no longer holds open long enough, opens too aggressively, or has reverted to acting like a manual door because the motor has given up. We diagnose whether the fault is mechanical or electronic, rebuild or replace the operator's internal components, and re-set the opening force, speed, and hold-open time to the correct values for a safe, comfortable cycle.
More automatic door problems are caused by sensors than by the operator itself. Every powered pedestrian door relies on two kinds of detection working together: activation sensors that tell the door someone is approaching and to open, and safety sensors that hold the door open while a person is still in the path of the moving leaf. When an automatic door opens and then refuses to close, the safety system is almost always the culprit — an overhead presence sensor whose lens is fogged or dirty, a threshold photo-beam that has drifted out of alignment, or low winter sun streaming across the opening and tricking an infrared sensor into seeing an obstruction. We clean, realign, recalibrate, and where necessary replace motion sensors, presence sensors, and safety beams so the door reads the opening accurately.
Activation devices are equally varied: overhead microwave motion sensors, floor mats, push plates, and touchless wave switches. A door that opens for no reason, opens too late, or opens for passing foot traffic that was never meant to come in usually needs its activation sensor's detection field re-shaped or its sensitivity re-set. Getting the activation and safety zones tuned to the actual geometry of the opening — so the door is responsive without being twitchy, and safe without being stuck — is precise work, and it is where experience separates a lasting repair from a temporary one.
Automatic door stuck open or stuck closed? Call 613-265-3667 for fast automatic door service across Ottawa & the Valley — we can switch the entrance to safe manual operation and complete the repair, or request a quote online.
When you are adding an accessible entrance, replacing a tired old operator, or building out a new Ottawa retail or clinical space, we supply and install complete automatic door systems. Installation starts with the opening: we measure the rough opening, assess the wall and header structure that will carry the operator's weight, confirm the power supply, and recommend whether an automatic sliding or automatic swing system suits your traffic volume, available floor space, and accessibility goals. A high-volume retail entrance typically wants a sliding system; a narrower vestibule or an accessible washroom corridor is usually best served by a low-energy swing operator.
From there we install the operator, mount and aim the activation and safety sensors, set up the activation switches or push plates, and commission the entire system — running it through its full cycle repeatedly to confirm the opening speed, closing speed, hold-open time, and sensor coverage all fall within the powered-door safety standard. We finish by walking you through daily operation and the simple safety check your staff should perform each morning before the public arrives.
An automatic entrance is one of the most effective ways to provide a barrier-free door, and in many Ottawa buildings it is what makes the difference between an entrance someone using a wheelchair, a walker, or a stroller can use independently and one they cannot. We configure automatic doors with accessibility in mind under the framework of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act and the Ontario Building Code, and we set up operators to the ANSI/BHMA A156.10 standard for full-energy power-operated doors or A156.19 for low-energy operators, depending on the system. That standard governs the opening and closing speeds, the hold-open time, the maximum forces, and the safety detection a powered door must provide. Getting those values right is not optional — it is what keeps the entrance both usable and safe.
A powered pedestrian door should be checked daily by the building operator using a simple walk-through routine, and inspected at least once a year by a qualified technician. The annual inspection is not a formality — it verifies that the operating forces, speeds, hold-open timing, and the activation and safety sensors are all still within specification after a year of cycling, weather, and wear. Sensors drift, belts stretch, and adjustments creep, and a door that was perfectly safe last spring can develop a closing force or a sensor blind spot that needs correcting. We provide scheduled maintenance and annual inspection programs for Ottawa automatic entrances, with documentation you can keep on file for liability and insurance purposes. Property managers and facility teams who run several automatic doors find a planned-maintenance agreement far cheaper than waiting for each entrance to fail at its busiest hour.
Automatic door work overlaps closely with accessible operators, electrified entry hardware, and commercial door repair. These pages go further:
A high-traffic Ottawa commercial entry diagnosed, serviced, and cycling smoothly again.
This operator header was wired, adjusted and tested so the entrance opens on command, holds safely and closes securely after each cycle.
Fast commercial response with flat-rate quotes — book a site visit that fits your operating hours.
Same crew, same flat-rate pricing — explore our dedicated Ottawa door service pages.
Low-energy accessible swing operators, push-plate actuators, and touchless wave switches installed and repaired across Ottawa.
Pedestrian Operators →Electric strikes, maglocks, card readers, and entry systems — installed, repaired, and integrated with your doors.
Access Control →Storefronts, offices, fire doors, and industrial entries — scheduled and emergency service for Ottawa businesses.
Commercial Door Repair →City-specific automatic door repair and installation, plus AODA accessibility operators — same-day across the region.
Property managers and facility teams — get pricing and book a site visit that suits your hours.
What Ottawa businesses and facility managers ask us most about automatic doors.
Call for automatic door repair and installation across Ottawa & the Valley, or send us the details and we'll give you a fast, flat-rate quote — no pressure, no surprises.