Job Report

Revolving Door Warms Chilly Hotel Lobby

Imagine playing the piano with your coat on. Or picture donning a down parka to work behind the front desk of a major hotel. Ridiculous? Not really. Employees at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza in Stamford, Conn., used to spend winter dressed for the ski slopes while working in the hotel's uncomfortably cold lobby.

Constructed in 1984, the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza reflects the current trend in hotel architecture toward the use of atrium lobbies. Designed to give a sense of openness and allow for more flexible use of lobby space, the two-story atrium in the Crowne Plaza houses a pool on the lower level and a restaurant and cocktail bar, as well as the front desk, on the main level.

Originally, the hotel entrance was constructed with two automatic biparting sliding doors. One door was at the entrance and the second was in the hotel interior. In theory, the sliders were to form a vestibule to trap the incoming cold air. In practice, however, they allowed cold air to rush into the lobby almost nonstop.

Mike DeMarco, engineer at the Stamford Holiday Inn, explained that during peak times -- that is during the morning check-out and the late afternoon check-in period -- the sliding doors were nearly always open. Guests and bellhops alike use the front entrance. Also, a third set of sliding doors on an adjacent wall permits direct access to the hotel parking lot. "When both doors were open," said DeMarco, "the lobby was like a wind tunnel."

Revolving Doors Always Open, Always Closed

Bill Collins, general manager and owner of Door Control, Inc., recommended that the Holiday Inn replace the interior slider with a revolving door to eliminate the temperature-control problem. The Wallingford, Conn. based company sells and services automatic doors and windows for commercial installations in the six states of New England and a large portion of New York state, so Collins is familiar with the "wind tunnel" effect.

To eliminate the problem, Collins was quick to specify a Horton Automatics automatic revolving door for the Holiday Inn. He said, "Revolving doors are perfect for hotel lobbies because they're always open, always closed. No matter how much traffic they get, an automatic revolving door always stops at a quarter point. And we've been installing Horton Automatics' line of doors and windows for 21 years, so I was confident that a Horton Automatics revolving door would stand up to the heavy traffic at the Holiday Inn."

Installation Takes Only Two Days

In February 1987, Door Control installed one Horton Automatics Series 9000 fully automatic revolving door at the lobby entrance with an automatic swing door on each side. The installation includes a Horton Automatics Series 7000 push-button activated operator for the handicapped and for building code compliance.

Installation of the three doors was completed in only two days. Said Collins, "We worked around the guests and employees, and we still managed to get the doors installed in one working day; the second day our people went back only to adjust the controls and do the finish work." With the Horton Automatics door, the bottom pivot is surface mounted and the operator installed overhead, hidden in the door's canopy, so that the floor of the lobby was not dug up to accommodate the new door.

The dark bronze extruded aluminum door features Horton Automatics' patented "flat-glass" design. Instead of a curved glass drum, the eight-foot diameter door is composed of eight sections of flat glass set at an angle to conform to the rotation of the door. This design permits Collins to order glass for the revolver "off-the-shelf," thus eliminating the expense and long lead time required for custom-made curved glass. (Typical hotel installations use 9' or 10' diameter, three wing automatic revolving doors. Horton Automatics also offers the curved glass round design.)

Hotel personnel couldn't be happier with the new doors... and their comfortable lobby. Collins said that the day after the doors were installed, the temperature in the lobby rose 10 degrees. While DeMarco has not monitored the daily temperatures, he is confident that it's always comfortable. "I don't have to keep records on it. I just know that the front desk personnel have stopped calling me to complain about being cold." And if you remain unconvinced that a revolving door can stabilize the temperature in a hotel lobby, just ask the piano player. She now wears cocktail dresses to work!

The Plants Are Happier Too

While the Holiday Inn's Mike DeMarco gauges the success of his hotel's renovations by the calls he doesn't get from the front desk, his counterpart at the Marriott City Center in Charlotte, N.C., measures his by the greenery in the lobby.

Arlie Kisner, chief engineer at the Marriott, came to Charlotte in February 1985. He recalls that during this first week on the job the temperature in downtown Charlotte was minus five degrees, and the Marriott lobby was below freezing. Kisner was greeted by the front desk employees wearing parkas and a lobby full of dead ficus trees.

The problem in Charlotte was similar to that in Stamford. Two sets of biparting automatic sliding doors -- one external and one internal -- were supposed to create an air lock for temperature control. But during periods of heavy traffic, the doors were frequently open at the same time, and the negative air pressure in the three-story atrium "sucked in the cold air."

The problem was magnified by the fad that the Charlotte Marriott is connected via an open-air atrium to One Independence Office Tower. During rush hour, workers bound for Independence Tower cut through the hotel lobby. Arlie Kisner remembers seeing both sets of sliding doors stand open for a long as 40 minutes.

Kisner then contacted Walter Aberson of Carolina Door Controls in Charlotte to help him stabilize the temperature in the lobby. Aberson removed the exterior sliding door and installed Horton Automatics' three-wing automatic revolving door. The door is activated by photoelectric sensors that set the door in motion when a pedestrian is within five feet of it, so guests who might otherwise be inclined to use the adjacent swing door are encouraged by this motion to walk through the revolving door.

Hotel bellhops, who most often push large luggage carts, use a Horton Automatics manual swing door that was installed next to the revolving door in an area previously occupied by a sidelight to the sliding doors. The swing door is manned, and its 42-inch opening provides ample barrier-free access for handicapped guests.

Since the installation of the doors in February 1985, the temperature in the lobby of the Charlotte Marriott has been a consistently comfortable 70 degrees. Hotel guests are happy; front desk personnel take their coats off after they get to work; and the ficus trees are thriving.