Doors
Bi-folds are what we're asked for most and what we fit most. We also do sliding patio doors, composite front doors, uPVC back doors, French doors and roof lanterns — all made to the sizes we take off your opening.
Our speciality
A bi-fold folds its panels back on themselves and stacks them to one side, leaving you around 90% of the opening completely clear. Nothing else opens a room to a garden in quite the same way.
They also punish bad fitting harder than any other product we install. The panels hang off a track, so if the opening isn't dead level or the track isn't properly bedded and drained, the doors bind, drag and eventually won't lock. That's why we laser-level the aperture, confirm the lintel can carry the span, and set the cill in a continuous bed of sealant with the drainage path kept clear.
| Panels | Typical opening | Common stack |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 1.5m – 2.0m | 1 left + 1 right, or both one way |
| 3 | 2.0m – 3.0m | 2 + 1, with the single as traffic door |
| 4 | 2.6m – 4.0m | 3 + 1, or 2 + 2 split from the middle |
| 5 | 3.4m – 5.0m | 4 + 1, or 3 + 2 |
| 6 | 4.2m – 6.0m | 3 + 3 split, or 5 + 1 |
| 7 | 5.0m – 7.0m | 6 + 1, or 4 + 3 |
This is the detail worth spending a minute on, because it's the one people regret.
A low upstand with proper drainage channels. Barely a trip hazard, and it will keep driving rain out of your kitchen in a February storm. This is what we recommend unless there's a reason not to.
Genuinely level inside to out, which matters for wheelchairs and looks superb. It needs the track recessed into the slab and an external drainage channel or gully immediately outside. Possible on most new extensions, rarely retrofittable without groundwork. We'll tell you honestly whether your floor can take it.
Where will the stacked panels sit? A four-panel set folded to one side is roughly 400mm deep and around a metre wide against the return wall. If that's exactly where you wanted the sofa or the bins, better to know now — we can usually split the stack or reverse the fold to suit.
Wide openings, minimal frame
Where a bi-fold gives you a completely clear opening, a slider gives you a bigger, uninterrupted pane of glass and a much cleaner line when it's shut. For a lot of houses that's the better trade, especially if the doors spend most of the year closed.
Open the doors most days and want the whole wall gone in summer? Bi-fold. Want the biggest possible view with the least frame, and you'll mostly use one leaf? Slider. We'll price both from the same survey so you can decide on real numbers.
Front & back
The front door does more for how a house looks from the street than anything else you can change for the money. It's also the thing an intruder tries first.
A 48mm solid-core slab: glass-reinforced plastic skin over an insulated timber and foam core. It won't warp like timber, won't flex like uPVC, and it's substantially harder to get through.
The sensible choice for a back door, utility or side passage. Fully glazed, half glazed or solid panelled, on the same multi-point locking as the front.
Lock snapping is how most uPVC and composite doors get opened. We fit 3-star kite-marked anti-snap cylinders as standard, not as an upgrade.
Chrome, satin, black, gold, graphite and antique brass on handles, knockers, letterplates, spyholes and numerals. All matched across the door.
Side lights, top lights and full surrounds to fill an oversized opening properly, rather than packing the gap out with plastic trim.
Classic and cost-effective
Two hinged leaves that open from the centre. Cheaper than a bi-fold or a slider, simpler mechanically, and there's much less to go wrong over twenty years. For a standard 1.5m to 2m opening onto a garden they're often the right answer, not the compromise.
Flat roof extensions
A flat-roof extension can end up as the darkest room in the house, particularly if it's north-facing and the only glazing is the back wall. A lantern fixes that in a way no amount of downlights will, because overhead daylight is worth roughly three times the same area of glass in a vertical wall.
Door questions
A cheap one on a bad threshold, yes. A thermally broken aluminium set with twin gaskets on every meeting stile and a properly bedded cill performs about as well as a large window, with whole-door U-values around 1.4 W/m²K.
The failure point is almost always the threshold detail and the fitting, not the door. That's the bit we're careful about.
Usually, yes, and usually for far less than a replacement. It's normally worn rollers, a track full of grit, hinges that have dropped, or a lock keep that's shifted a couple of millimetres out of alignment.
Occasionally the real problem is that the opening has settled or the original install was out of level, in which case the fix is bigger. We'll tell you which it is before we start charging you for parts.
Widening an opening in a load-bearing wall means a new steel or concrete lintel, temporary propping and a Building Control application, and on a semi or terrace it may need a party wall notice. It's structural work rather than glazing work.
We're happy to fit the doors into an opening your builder forms, and we'll give them the exact structural opening sizes to work to. If you don't have a builder we can usually point you at one locally.
Composite for a front door, almost every time. The 48mm solid core feels substantially more solid in the hand, insulates better, holds colour better in direct sun, and resists a shoulder charge in a way a hollow uPVC sash doesn't.
uPVC is perfectly sensible for a back or side door where it's sheltered and less exposed, and it saves money on a door nobody sees from the street.
Up to about 7m with seven panels, and up to 2.5m tall. Individual panels max out around 1200mm wide — go wider and the panel gets heavy enough to stress the hinges over time.
Beyond 7m you're usually better with a slider, or a bi-fold plus a fixed glazed screen. The bigger constraint is normally the lintel above rather than the doors themselves, which is why we check that at survey.
Very little, but not none. Brush or vacuum the bottom track every couple of months — grit in the track is what wears rollers out — and put a drop of light oil on the hinges twice a year.
Do that and a decent set will run for well over a decade. Neglect the track and you'll be paying for rollers in year four.
Free survey and a written, itemised quote. We'll price the alternatives too, so you can compare a bi-fold against a slider on real numbers rather than opinion.
