Section 4 Types of Doors and Windows

The entire medical laboratory is divided into zones of different biosafety levels; these different zones are connected mainly through internal corridors, and closure or openness is achieved through doors. Therefore, when building a clinical laboratory, quite a number of doors may be needed, but the types of doors used differ among zones. Here we give a detailed introduction to the several types of doors mainly used in laboratories.

I. Glass Doors

Glass doors are generally used at the junction between the waiting area and the laboratory area to divide the zones. The glass door is a rather special kind of door leaf: first, its thickness is insufficient to call it a solid door, yet it does not belong to the shaped-door category; in fact, it is a special form of door leaf. The characteristics of a glass door are determined by the characteristics of the glass itself. For example, when tempered transparent glass is used, the door leaf has a see-through function, while frosted glass gives a semi-transmitting function. Safety glass doors include tempered glass, bulletproof glass, wired glass, and laminated glass. They admit good light, are easy to clean, have high mechanical strength and good thermal stability, do not scatter when shattered, and are unlikely to injure people. They also provide a certain degree of anti-robbery, anti-theft, and fire protection, as shown in Fig. 8-38.

Fig. 8-38 Glass door

II. Solid-Wood Composite Doors

Solid-wood composite doors are mostly used in the clean areas of laboratories. The core of a solid-wood composite door is mostly bonded from pine, fir, or imported filling materials. Density board and solid-wood veneer are laminated on the outside, made by high-temperature hot pressing, with solid-wood molding strips sealing the edges. For general high-grade solid-wood composite doors, the door core is mostly high-quality white pine and the surface is solid-wood veneer. Because white pine has low density, light weight, and relatively easy moisture-content control, the finished doors are light in weight and resistant to deformation and cracking. In addition, solid-wood composite doors have the features of thermal insulation, impact resistance, and flame retardancy, and their sound-insulation effect is basically the same as that of solid-wood doors. Because solid-wood composite doors come in diverse shapes and rich styles, doors of different decorative styles give consumers a broad range of choices. Besides, the facing materials of modern wood doors are commonly wood veneer and paper film. Veneered wood doors have a rich natural texture, are attractive and highly impact-resistant, and are relatively expensive; paper-film wood doors, also called "grain doors," are inexpensive and thus more mass-market products, with the disadvantages of being easily damaged and vulnerable to water. Solid-wood composite doors have a smooth feel and soft color; they are very environmentally friendly, firm, and durable, as shown in Fig. 8-39.

Fig. 8-39 Solid-wood composite door

III. Steel-Wood Doors

Steel-wood doors can also be used in laboratory clean areas. Steel-wood doors generally fall into two types: one is the steel-wood interior door, a packaged door used for interior decoration, and the other is the armored door. Both types developed from security doors, and much of their craftsmanship was transferred from security doors; their structures are all mixed structures of steel plate and wood, so they are both called steel-wood doors.

Steel-wood interior door: a series of packaged doors for room interior decoration. The outer layer uses steel plate, while the inside is filled with environmentally friendly materials such as wooden frames and paperboard; the price is affordable, making it a fairly mature and widely accepted mid-range interior door on the market. Many dealers or industry insiders abbreviate this type of door as steel-wood door. Because its surface material differs from that of a security door, it can only be installed indoors, away from sunlight, hence the name interior door. The combination of the two is called steel-wood interior door. Since door frames are always supplied when installing the door, it can also be called steel-wood interior packaged door. Novel in style and rich in color; attractive and dignified, artistic, and strongly three-dimensional. The surface uses a multi-color process suited to all kinds of room styles—noble, elegant, and personalized; it is made from high-quality embossed steel plate composited with wooden internal ribs, with novel style and rich colors; after transfer printing it shows a natural wood grain; the door face is realistic, brightly colored, and smooth and delicate to the touch; the product is firm and durable; it resists moths, moisture, stains, heat, and cracking, stays firm without deformation, has good sound insulation and heat insulation, is non-toxic and odorless, contains no formaldehyde or toluene, and has no radiation pollution—environmentally friendly and healthy; the door frame and door leaf combine perfectly, and installation is simple, saving time, labor, materials, and money.

IV. Aluminum Alloy Doors

Aluminum alloy doors are used only in the bathrooms inside the laboratory, because bathrooms have heavy water vapor and neither solid-wood doors nor steel-wood doors are suitable.

An aluminum alloy door is a door-frame component made from surface-treated aluminum alloy profiles through cutting, drilling, milling, tapping, and fabrication, then assembled together with connectors, sealing materials, and opening/closing hardware. Aluminum alloy doors are usually installed in damp environments such as bathhouses and bathrooms, so the quality of hardware such as hinges and door handles is the key to ensuring the service life of an aluminum alloy door.

One feature of aluminum alloy doors is their strong decorativeness. Most aluminum alloy doors are set with art glass of varied designs. This glass may be single-layer, or double-layer insulating glass with strong three-dimensionality and good sound insulation, as shown in Fig. 8-40.

Fig. 8-40 Aluminum alloy door

V. Color Steel Plate Doors

As the name suggests, a color steel plate door is a door made of color steel plate, and it is the type of door used in the greatest quantity in a laboratory. During actual construction, a color steel plate door can be fabricated on site from the color steel plate cut out when openings are made in the color steel plate walls, so that no material is wasted. Because its material is consistent not only in texture with the color steel plate walls but also meets the purification requirements of the laboratory very well, as shown in Fig. 8-41.

Features of color steel plate doors:

  • (1) Low noise when closing, good sound insulation, light to open, and simple to operate and use.
  • (2) The surface is spray-coated with plastic and baked at high temperature, or made of color steel plate; elegant and attractive, firm and durable, highly impact-resistant, free of deformation and corrosion, resistant to paint peeling and aging. It possesses advantages that wooden doors cannot match.

Fig. 8-41 Color steel plate door

VI. Lead Plate Doors

Lead plate doors, i.e., radiation-shielding doors, are mainly used at entrances and exits through which radiation must be blocked, and are used chiefly in hospitals, equipment rooms, and mining areas. In a clinical laboratory, the radioimmunoassay room needs a lead plate door; consequently, they are used in very small quantities. By door type they can be divided into side-hung radiation-shielding doors, sliding radiation-shielding doors, and electric radiation-shielding doors. Side-hung radiation-shielding doors: side-hung radiation-shielding doors can be divided into inward-opening doors and outward-opening doors; the structure and materials of the door body are determined according to the power rating (kV) of the radiation machine and the size of the door opening. Sliding radiation-shielding doors: the structure is a steel-plus-lead composite structure. Lead doors can be divided into double-leaf opposite-opening doors and single-leaf doors, and their drive modes are of two kinds, electric and manual. Electric doors can be made with either upper drive or lower drive according to installation conditions and user requirements; the protective lead equivalent and door body size are customized according to the user's actual radiation dose level and the size of the door opening. The products are technically advanced and exquisitely made, and the electric radiation-shielding doors are also furnished with safety devices such as door-machine interlocks, operation indicator lights, and ionizing radiation warning signs, as shown in Fig. 8-42.

Fig. 8-42 Lead plate door

VII. Specimen Receiving Windows

In the emergency laboratory, sputum examination room, and body fluid room, specimen receiving windows are generally installed for the delivery and collection of patient specimens and samples.

There are mainly two ways of constructing specimen receiving windows. One faces the waiting hall, while inside it the biochemistry, routine examination, and emergency workstations are together; this type must be made as a large continuous window, that is, several windows arranged in a row, and after completion each is labeled according to its function. Such windows look quite attractive and imposing when finished. They are generally used at sample-reception windows in large hospitals such as tertiary hospitals. The materials are mostly tempered glass, stainless-steel-clad columns, and high-grade marble for the projecting counter, as shown in Fig. 8-43, Fig. 8-44, and Fig. 8-45.

The other type faces the waiting room, with only a biochemistry room inside, where sample reception is carried out at a single window. Such a sample-reception window is generally a single window, found at the sample-reception windows of small hospitals such as primary hospitals; the materials used are only tempered glass and a stainless-steel-clad window frame, and the projecting counter is also clad in stainless steel, as shown in Fig. 8-46.

Fig. 8-43 Sample-reception window Blood collection / sample reception / report issuance window elevation 1:30

① Blood collection / sample reception / report issuance window section 1:30

Fig. 8-44 Sample-reception window

Blood collection / sample reception / report issuance window elevation 1:30

① Blood collection / sample reception / report issuance window section 1:30

Fig. 8-45 Sample-reception window Blood collection / sample reception / report issuance window elevation

① Blood collection / sample reception / report issuance window section

Fig. 8-46 Sample-reception window

VIII. Pass-Through Windows

As an auxiliary device for clean rooms, the pass-through window is mainly used for transferring small articles between a clean area and a clean area, or between a non-clean area and a clean area, in order to reduce the number of times the clean-room door is opened and minimize contamination of the clean area.

Pass-through windows are divided into electronic-interlock pass-through windows, mechanical-interlock pass-through windows, and self-purifying pass-through windows.

According to their working principle, pass-through windows can be divided into air-shower pass-through windows, ordinary pass-through windows, and laminar-flow pass-through windows. Various models of pass-through windows can be fabricated according to actual requirements.

Working principles:

  1. Mechanical interlock device: interlocking is achieved internally by mechanical means; when one door is opened, the other door cannot be opened, and the other door must be closed properly before the first door can be opened.

  2. Electronic interlock device: an integrated circuit, electromagnetic lock, control panel, indicator lights, and so on are used internally to achieve interlocking; when one of the doors is opened, the door-open indicator light of the other door does not light up, indicating that this door cannot be opened, while the electromagnetic lock acts to achieve interlocking. When that door is closed, the electromagnetic lock of the other door starts working and the indicator light lights up at the same time, indicating that the other door can be opened, as shown in Fig. 8-47.

Fig. 8-47 Pass-through window

IX. Observation Windows

In order to increase the lighting and transparency of the laboratory, observation windows should be set in the walls; they also make it convenient to observe the test-subject conditions of specimens in different work spaces, as shown in Fig. 8-48.

Fig. 8-48 Observation window