Blue books will be closing, final grades will be submitted, and professors and students alike will breathe a sigh of relief as the school year wraps up this month.

While the relief and sense of accomplishment at the end of another year aren’t new feelings, many experiences over the past 12 months were novel for everyone on campus. Masking and hybrid classes became the norm. Extracurriculars and presentations happened from behind computer screens instead of front and center in person.

But what do the next 12 months hold for those in collegiate settings?

We’re not fortune tellers, but think it’s safe to say more people will return to campus next year. Classes will probably pick back up in person, with the excitement and energies that can be tough to communicate at times through a screen.

With that influx of people will come requests to update buildings, dorms, and parking areas on the grounds. Scuffed up floors, finicky ACs, and dinged parking garage entrances may all be on the to-do list for colleges to refresh this summer.

Grilles in Higher Education

If a college’s parking garage already has a grille to secure it, the task list could include a product or part replacement. If you’re in the market for a new parking garage closure such as a security grille, there are some considerations you’ll want to keep in mind when comparing options:

• Grille cycle speed: at a college where students and faculty are heading into and out of a parking garage at all hours and before, during, and after classes, look for a security grille that can withstand a significant number of cycles while still being able to cycle rapidly. Cookson high performance grilles range from opening speeds up to 24” per second and closing speeds of up to 12” per second to maximize productivity – and the overall efficiency of getting people and cars in and out.
  
  
• Lifetime cycles: For a busy collegiate parking garage with lots of sporting events, conferences, and presentations each week, you want a security grille that can cycle quickly and also hold up to daily demands of those quick cycles. If a grille moves quickly but can’t withstand repeated cycles throughout the day or week, the speed won’t matter.

• Cookson grilles are offered in a range of lifetime cycles, from 50,000 for regular performance grilles and 300,000 or even 500,000 for high performance grilles, depending on your needs and the application.

• Maintenance requirements: One thing is a certainty with grilles in parking garages: your grille will likely encounter damage. Whether a car hits the curtain, someone attempts to enter the garage during off-limits hours, or another activity leads to damage, it’s something you should expect at least once over your grille’s lifetime.

• In a collegiate setting, the risk for damage may be slightly higher because of late-night antics or overtired drivers with slower reaction times.

• There are steps you can take to ameliorate grille damage. The first is to check that the grille you’ve specified into the opening is the best fit for the application and area.
  
  
• Do you need a grille to fit into a limited headroom area? (Making sure you know what size grille you need can eliminate damage from the grille coiling into a space that’s too small.)
  
  
• Will you be able to dedicate time for minimal maintenance, including a daily once-over to check that everything is running smoothly with all closures in your parking garage?

• What about your product choice? Are there options to quickly replace damaged parts if necessary? What about the manufacturer’s warranty and ability to ship out a new grille if the whole system takes a hit?

At Cookson, our products are warrantied for up to two years, and because we know how important it is to have replacement parts and products ready when you need them, our nationwide network of Authorized Dealers can be on-site quickly if you need help: cooksondoor.com/find-a-dealer.

• Operation capabilities: Much like rolling doors, security grilles have a range of operation capabilities. They can be cycled via push-up, chain, crank, or motor operation, although with high performance grilles, motor operation is required to keep up with the intense number of cycles the grille will see in a day.
  
  • On a bustling college campus, choosing motor operation may be the best way to go – especially because you don’t want a closure to accidentally close off the garage due to operation issues.
  • No matter the operation, all Cookson grilles come with a hand chain to operate the grille in case of emergency. Motor operated grilles also close on alarm or during a power outage to ensure safety.

Locks on rolling grilles are located within the bottom bar and can be of the slide bolt, thumb turn, or cylinder lock variety. These locks can be placed on the coil side (the side facing the interior) or the fascia side (the side facing the exterior/outside), and can be on the left, right, or in the center of the bottom bar.

We also offer a more advanced lock for our MicroCoil grille called Electronic Autolock available for use with the Extreme 500 MicroCoil grille. It can also be retrofit into existing applications. The automatic locks are mounted to the grille’s guides and automatically engage the cylinder lock when activated. In the event of a power outage, the locks will stay locked when the grille is in the closed position, but can be overridden with a key.  

• Headroom and spacing requirements: When choosing a closure for a college’s parking garage, knowing the amount of headroom needed and amount of space you have for the grille are paramount. In areas with limited headroom, Cookson’s Extreme High Performance MicroCoil 500 Grille may be the ticket.

As the only high performance parking gate to coil up into less than 14” (or smaller) of headroom, you can maximize your clear opening space with sacrificing performance. On school grounds, where many structures create an impressive network and many students will gather together in the future, one additional place you shouldn’t have to worry about spacing is in parking garage openings.  

Don’t skip your studying on this one: reach out to talk to an expert about Cookson’s high performance grille options.

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