A metal door access panel is what you fit when the panel will be seen, handled and opened. The door arrives finished, so nothing has to happen to it on site once the frame is in. No skimming, no filling, no decorating before the room can be handed over.
The doors are pressed from zinc coated mild steel, commonly known as Zintec, and powder coated white to RAL 9010 as standard. That surface takes knocks, wipes clean and copes with the traffic in a riser, a plant room, a corridor or a back of house kitchen far better than a papered or skimmed face. These panels are lockable, so the opening stays shut until somebody with the key wants it open.
The two alternatives are worth naming honestly. A plasterboard access panel carries a board faced door that is taped, jointed and skimmed in with the wall around it, which is what you want in a hallway or a bedroom ceiling where the panel should read as part of the surface. A plastic access panel costs less and suits light duty domestic openings, but it carries no fire rating and will not take the same handling. Metal sits between the two: visible, hard wearing, and available fire rated.
Three ranges run through the metal door line. They differ in how the panel is built and how it goes into the opening rather than in what it does once it is there. Two specialist lines and a made to measure route sit alongside them.
The budget metal door is the price led option, offered with a picture frame or a beaded frame. It suits repeat openings that are rarely opened and where appearance comes second to cost. It carries no fire rating, so keep it out of compartment walls and ceilings.
The standard metal access panel is the everyday specification, offered with either frame, powder coated white and supplied with a budget lock. Check the lock stated on the product page before you order.
FlipFix metal doors fit with a clamp system rather than separate fixings, so the panel is set into the opening and tightened from the front. That pays off on repeat installation and on openings you cannot reach behind. The wider range is at FlipFix access panels.
Two lines sit outside the main ranges. A 1 hour fire rated circular panel, metal door with a picture frame, for round openings. And a 1 hour fire rated panel that is also airtight, smoke tested and 30dB acoustic rated, again with a picture frame.
Where no stock size lines up with the opening, a made to measure metal panel is built to the dimensions you give. Larger or more unusual one off work sits under bespoke access panels.
Every metal door here comes in one of two frames, and the state of the surface decides which, not the door.
A picture frame lands on top of the finished surface and laps over the cut edge of the opening. Nothing is plastered and nothing is filled. You are left with a tidy border standing proud around the door, which is why it is the practical answer for a wall that has already been boarded, skimmed and decorated, and the sensible choice if the panel may have to come out again.
A beaded frame is buried in the finish instead. Its perforated edge beds against the plasterboard and is then taped and skimmed over, leaving the door flush and no frame on show. It belongs in new work where the plasterer is still to come, and it commits somebody to that wet trade. Decide it before the boards go up rather than after. The full breadth of that frame type, in metal and in plasterboard, is set out on beaded access panels.
A steel door on its own does nothing for fire. If the construction the panel goes into has to hold a rating, only a panel tested as a complete fire rated assembly will do the job.
1 hour fire rated metal doors are stocked with a picture frame and with a beaded frame, in the standard construction and in FlipFix. 2 hour is listed in the FlipFix line with a picture frame. The rating belongs to the whole assembly, frame and door and fixings together, so fit them exactly as the instructions supplied with the panel set out, and do not swap parts between ranges.
Read the required duration off the drawings or the building’s fire strategy. Copying whatever unit is already sitting in the corridor wall is not evidence of anything. Range by range detail is on fire rated metal door access panels, and the whole rated catalogue, doors of every material, is on fire rated access panels.
Where the same panel repeats across a phase or a house type, check multipack discounts before ordering singly.
