Automatic doors Nairobi are supplied and installed by Coetz™ and MC Automations Entrance Systems as a project, shipped from our facility in Johannesburg. Nairobi is the capital of Kenya, sitting on a highland plateau at roughly 1 795 m, and its buildings put demands on an entrance that a temperate specification does not answer. This guide covers what to specify, and what we can and cannot tell you in advance.
For the full range, with prices and installation through MC Automations, see our automatic doors page.
What automatic doors Nairobi have to survive
Nairobi has a mild highland climate with two distinct rainy seasons and a long dry spell between them. Red highland dust and driving seasonal rain is the enemy of a sliding entrance: it works into the track, loads the rollers and settles on the sensor lenses. That is not a reason to avoid an automatic entrance — it is a reason to specify one that can be cleaned and serviced, and to plan the service interval around the local conditions rather than a generic calendar.
Our door leaves are powder-coated aluminium, which is the right base material for hot and coastal environments because it does not rust and the coating carries the finish. The moving parts — track, rollers, floor guides and sensors — are the components that wear, and they are the ones worth planning around when you specify automatic doors Nairobi.
Specifying automatic doors Nairobi: the decisions that matter
Most of the specification for automatic doors Nairobi comes down to a short list of decisions, and all of them are easier to make before the opening is built than after:
- Opening width, set for how two-way traffic actually overlaps at the busiest part of the day, not for the average.
- Sliding or swing. A sliding entrance needs side space for the leaf to travel into. Where there is none, the MCW-100 swing operator automates a door that is already there.
- Access control, decided up front, because it changes the wiring and the door’s behaviour rather than being bolted on later.
- Battery backup, which matters wherever the mains supply is not guaranteed — it decides whether the entrance fails safely open or simply stops.
- Sealing and cleaning access, so that red highland dust and driving seasonal rain can be swept out of the track instead of grinding through the rollers.
Get those five right and automatic doors Nairobi behave the same way on day one and in year five. Get them wrong and the entrance becomes a maintenance item rather than a piece of the building.
Automatic doors Nairobi and the safety rules that do not bend
Whatever else changes between markets, the safety principle does not: a powered entrance must detect a person standing in the opening and hold, rather than close on them. That is the principle set out in EN 16005, and it is the reason sensor testing belongs in every service visit. Sensors drift, they get knocked by trolleys, and lenses fog or dust over — so on automatic doors Nairobi we treat sensor checks as routine work, not as a fault call.
Local building and fire regulations in Kenya govern escape routes and may set requirements for how an entrance behaves in an emergency. We do not hold those approvals on your behalf and we will not claim compliance we cannot evidence — your local consultant confirms what the authority requires, and we build the entrance to meet it.
Automatic doors Nairobi: service, spares and the distance problem
The honest difficulty with automatic doors Nairobi is distance. A service call from Johannesburg is not a next-day visit, so the plan has to shift from reacting to failures towards preventing them. In practice that means holding a small spares kit on site — belt, rollers and floor guides are the parts that go first — and agreeing at the outset who carries out routine cleaning and sensor checks between our visits.
The MC-125 system is tested to one million operating cycles and carries a 24-month warranty on the operator. Those are the figures we stand behind. We will not quote a lead time, a freight cost or a duty figure for Nairobi in an article, because they depend on the consignment, the route and the prevailing tariff on the day — those come back to you in writing with the quotation.
Frequently asked questions
Does Coetz install automatic doors in Nairobi, or only supply them?
Both. Coetz supplies the equipment and MC Automations installs it. Installation outside South Africa is handled as a project: we quote the equipment, the freight and the installation visit together, against your drawings.
Where are the door systems made?
The MC-125 sliding door system is assembled in South Africa, at our Laser Park facility in Johannesburg. Assembly is done there from supplied components.
How long does the MC-125 operator last?
The MC-125 is tested to one million operating cycles and carries a 24-month warranty on the operator. Actual service life depends on the traffic the entrance carries and how well grit is kept out of the track.
Can the entrance be linked to an access control system?
Yes. The MC-125 integrates with card readers, keypads, remotes and intercoms, so one entrance can be open during staffed hours and controlled outside them.
What does an automatic doors Nairobi project cost?
The South African published prices are R27 590 for the MC-125 sliding system and R15 900 for the MCW-100 swing operator. Freight, duties and installation for a project in Nairobi are quoted separately once we have the opening sizes and site details.
Starting a project in Nairobi. Send us the opening sizes, the building type and whether the entrance needs access control, and we will come back with the equipment, freight and installation quoted together. Our automatic door service areas page sets out where our own installation teams are based, and the MC-125 automatic sliding door system page carries the full equipment detail.
Backup power and access control
Battery backup, fail-open or fail-secure behaviour and the manual release are decisions about the building, not the operator, so they belong in the specification for automatic doors Nairobi from the start. The same is true of access control — readers, buttons, intercoms and time clocks all interrupt or enable the operator, and retro-fitting them is mostly cable and ceiling work.
Matching the system to the traffic
Count the people, not the doors: one cycle is one open-and-close, so a doorway used by hundreds of people a day is doing far more work than the same doorway in a quiet office. That count, the opening width and the glass weight decide which system suits automatic doors Nairobi.
- Single sliding for shops, receptions and clinics.
- Bi-parting for malls, supermarkets and hospital corridors — openings up to 5000 mm.
- Telescopic where the wall beside the opening is short.
- Swing operators to automate an existing hinged door.
Getting the opening right for automatic doors Nairobi
Most trouble with a powered entrance starts at the opening, not the operator. We measure the structural opening, confirm the head can carry the load, look for anything above it that competes for space, and establish where the power comes in. An operator fixed to an inadequate head is the single most common cause of early call-outs, and it is entirely avoidable at survey stage.
Do you work outside South Africa?
Yes. We supply, install and service automatic doors across South Africa and, project by project, in neighbouring countries, with each cross-border job quoted in writing.
What service interval do you recommend?
Every six months as standard. Very busy entrances may need more frequent visits, which we agree with you per site.
How much work will the door really do?
Traffic is the number that sizes automatic doors Nairobi. Count people in and out, then add deliveries, staff movements and trolleys. A quiet reception and a supermarket entrance can look identical on a drawing and behave completely differently in service, which is why the cycle estimate belongs in the specification rather than in the assumptions.
Getting a fast, accurate figure
Send the structural opening sizes, a photograph taken square-on, and a note of the traffic, and a quotation for automatic doors Nairobi comes back quickly. Where a site survey is needed, we will say so; a free site measure confirms the opening, the power supply and the traffic flow before a fixed price is given.
- Opening width and height, measured to the structure.
- A photograph showing the doorway and the space above it.
- Daily traffic and trading hours.
- Access control, intercom or backup power, if wanted.
Making the entrance work for everybody
Hands-free access matters most to the people who find doors hardest: wheelchair users, parents with prams, delivery staff with both hands full. For automatic doors Nairobi we set hold-open time against how quickly people really move through the opening, and presence detection holds the door for anyone who pauses. A push-pad or a wave switch can be added where staff want manual control.
What glass comes as standard?
6.38 mm clear laminated safety glass, with tinted and performance options, quoted separately, where solar gain or privacy matters.
Can access control be added later?
It can, but cabling into a finished ceiling costs more than specifying it with the door. Readers, push buttons, intercoms and time clocks are all straightforward at installation stage.
Automatic doors Nairobi at a glance
- Pricing for automatic doors Nairobi follows the opening width, the glass and the sensor layout.
- Ask us to confirm the opening before ordering automatic doors Nairobi.
- Every enquiry about automatic doors Nairobi gets a written specification, not a verbal estimate.
Budgeting automatic doors Nairobi: where the money actually goes
Buyers usually ask for a single figure, and a single figure hides the decisions that matter. A quotation for automatic doors Nairobi breaks into four parts, and knowing which is which is what lets you compare two proposals honestly.
The first is the operator itself, the powered unit above the opening. The second is the leaf and its framing, which is a glazing and fabrication cost rather than an automation one. The third is installation and commissioning, which is physical work on site. The fourth is what happens afterwards: the service interval, the spares position and who answers the phone.
Suppliers who quote automatic doors Nairobi as one undifferentiated number are not necessarily hiding anything, but you cannot compare them. Ask for the split. A proposal that looks expensive on the operator and cheap on service is a different proposition over ten years from one built the other way round.
Nairobi sits inland at roughly 1 795 metres, so the environmental line in a budget is about dust ingress and a wide daily temperature range rather than salt. A marine specification quoted for a Nairobi lobby is money against a risk that is not there.
Comparing quotations like for like
Two quotations for automatic doors Nairobi can differ by a wide margin and both be honest, because they are frequently not quoting the same thing. These are the questions that expose the difference.
What duty class is the operator rated for, and against what cycle count? A unit specified for a quiet office lobby and one specified for a high-traffic retail threshold are different machines, and the cheaper quote is sometimes cheaper because it is the wrong machine.
What safety sensors are included? Activation and safety detection are not the same thing, and an entrance quoted with activation only is quoted incompletely. What is the warranty, and is it on the operator or on the whole installation? Who carries the commissioning, and is it priced in or assumed?
And finally, what is the service position once the entrance is running? On automatic doors Nairobi work that question decides more of the long-run cost than the purchase price does.
The documentation you should receive
This is the part buyers rarely specify and later wish they had. At handover on automatic doors Nairobi projects you should end up holding four things.
A record of the commissioning settings for each entrance: opening speed, closing speed, hold-open time and the safety settings as they were actually set. Without that baseline nobody can tell, a year later, how far a door has drifted or how to restore it.
A parts list identifying the operator model and the wear items, so that whoever maintains it is ordering the right thing rather than guessing. A service schedule with the interval and the reasoning behind it, per entrance rather than one figure for the building. And a clear statement of what the warranty covers and what voids it.
If a supplier cannot produce those four, it is worth asking what they intend to hand over at all.
Procuring across several sites
Where automatic doors Nairobi forms part of a wider rollout, the temptation is to standardise on one specification and apply it everywhere. That is right for the operator and wrong for the environment.
Standardising the operator model is genuinely valuable. It means one spares holding covers every site, one set of instructions applies, and whoever maintains the estate learns a single unit properly rather than five badly. That is a real saving and it compounds.
Standardising the environmental specification is where rollouts go wrong. A sheltered interior entrance and an exposed street-facing one are not the same job even in the same city, and a single specification applied across both either overspends on one or underprotects the other. Specify the unit centrally; specify the protection per opening.
Coetz Glazing supplies the equipment for automatic doors Nairobi projects and MC Automations installs and commissions it. Neither of us holds local building or fire approvals in this market, and where an entrance sits on an escape route your local consultant carries that question. Cross-border work is quoted per project, in writing, and we publish no landed prices, freight figures or lead times because those change.
When to involve us, and when not to
The cheapest moment to influence an automatic doors Nairobi project is before the opening is built, and the most expensive is after the floor has been poured and the header framed. If a project is still at drawing stage, a short conversation about header depth, leaf parking space and the floor line across the threshold will save more money than any discount on the operator.
Equally, there are projects where the honest answer is that you do not need us. If a sound automatic entrance is simply neglected, the right advice is to have it serviced properly rather than replaced, and that is the advice you will get from us even though it earns less.
Who does what: Coetz Glazing and MC Automations
Coetz Glazing and MC Automations are two businesses under the same ownership, and on automatic doors Nairobi projects they do different jobs. It is worth knowing which one you need.
Coetz Glazing supplies. This guide is the supply side: what equipment suits the market, what it involves to procure, and what to specify.
MC Automations installs and commissions. The physical work of fitting the operator to your opening, setting the safety systems and maintaining it afterwards is done by MC Automations, using its own MC-125 and MCW-100 operators. See automatic door operators Nairobi for how those installations run, and taking over other door brands if equipment is already in the building.
Most automatic doors Nairobi projects need both sides, and they are quoted as one piece of work rather than sending you between two companies.
Elsewhere in East Africa: automatic doors Kampala, automatic doors Kigali and automatic doors Dar es Salaam.
On the Kenyan coast: see automatic doors Mombasa.
Across the border in northern Tanzania: see automatic doors Arusha.
In western Kenya: see automatic doors Kisumu.
Automatic doors across Africa
Coetz™ supplies automatic entrance systems across Africa and MC Automations installs them, project by project from Laser Park in Johannesburg. Find your country or city below, or see automatic doors South Africa for projects at home and the MC Automations automatic doors Africa page.
- North Africa – Egypt: Cairo, Alexandria · Morocco: Rabat, Casablanca, Marrakech, Tangier · Algeria: Algiers · Tunisia: Tunis
- West Africa – Nigeria: Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Ibadan · Ghana: Accra, Kumasi · Côte d'Ivoire: Yamoussoukro, Abidjan · Senegal: Dakar · Togo: Lomé · Benin: Cotonou · Cape Verde: automatic doors Cape Verde
- Central Africa – Cameroon: Douala · Gabon: automatic doors Gabon, Libreville · Republic of the Congo: Brazzaville · DR Congo: Kinshasa, Lubumbashi · Angola: Luanda
- East Africa – Ethiopia: Addis Ababa · Kenya: Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu · Uganda: Kampala, Entebbe · Rwanda: Kigali · Tanzania: Dodoma, Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Zanzibar, Mwanza
- Southern Africa – Botswana: automatic doors Botswana, Gaborone, Francistown, Maun · Namibia: automatic doors Namibia, Windhoek, Walvis Bay, Swakopmund · Zimbabwe: automatic doors Zimbabwe, Harare, Bulawayo · Zambia: automatic doors Zambia, Lusaka, Livingstone, Ndola · Mozambique: automatic doors Mozambique, Maputo, Beira, Nampula · Malawi: automatic doors Malawi, Lilongwe · Lesotho: automatic doors Lesotho, Maseru · Eswatini: automatic doors Eswatini
- Indian Ocean islands – Madagascar: automatic doors Madagascar, Antananarivo · Mauritius: automatic doors Mauritius · Seychelles: automatic doors Seychelles
Coetz™ also exports aluminium windows and doors to every African country, supply only: see aluminium windows and doors Africa.
Building in Kenya? Coetz™ also supplies aluminium windows and doors Kenya, exported from our Laser Park factory for your builder to fit.
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