How to size an air curtain from the doorway outward

Opening and Mounting

Measure the finished door width, the clear opening height, and the actual mounting height from the finished floor to the air curtain discharge. The width usually rounds up to the nearest available cabinet length, but the mounting height decides whether the air stream has a reasonable chance of covering the opening.

Header clearance matters because the product must physically fit before performance can be reviewed. A low ceiling, recessed header, uneven wall surface, or exposed conduit can push the project toward a different mounting style even when the door width looks ordinary.

Doorway Duty

A retail entrance, a delivery door, a cold-room door, and a kitchen-adjacent opening should not be treated as the same air curtain problem. Retail projects usually emphasize comfort, insects, and traffic. Cold-room projects add temperature separation, condensation, frost risk, and cycle rate. Service doors add wind, dust, and repeated opening patterns.

This is where the guide connects to MiWind Air Curtains rather than staying as a bare chart. Standard, heated, industrial, ceiling, and cold-storage air curtain families only make sense after the doorway duty is known.

Heat, Voltage, Controls

Heated and unheated units serve different project expectations. Heating preference affects electrical review, installation clearance, and model-specific support; it should be discussed before a project moves into model review.

Door switches, wall controls, remotes, and continuous operation also change the review. For a distributor or contractor, these details are not decorative form fields; they are the difference between a useful equipment review and a follow-up email asking for missing basics.

Installation Notes

A doorway review becomes useful when the installer can see where the unit will sit. Note whether the air curtain mounts on a wall, above a recessed door, near a ceiling obstruction, or near a sprinkler, sign, light, conduit, or door closer. These details may change bracket choice, cabinet clearance, service access, and electrical routing.

For cold-room and kitchen-adjacent openings, include temperature split, moisture, odor, and makeup-air notes with the doorway dimensions. Those conditions shape the product discussion more than a simple width class.

Application Differences

A front entrance usually needs a cleaner comfort and traffic discussion. A delivery opening needs cycle rate, exposure, and abuse tolerance. A cold-room door needs temperature separation, frost or condensation notes, and model-specific data. A kitchen-adjacent doorway may need coordination with exhaust and makeup-air conditions.

This is the point of the guide: the same nominal width can lead to different MiWind Air Curtain families because the doorway is doing different work.

Keep the review package concise

A useful air curtain review does not need a long narrative. Send the door width, clear height, mounting height, exposure, heat preference, voltage, control expectation, photos of the header, and the application type.

That package gives the distributor enough context to route the doorway toward a standard, heated, industrial, ceiling, or cold-storage review without turning the first conversation into a final model promise.

Doorway sizing check

The short check below establishes a doorway width class and flags unusually tall mounting. It is intentionally simpler than the full air curtain sizing calculator, teaching selection logic without replacing equipment review.

Chart Limits

The most common error is selecting by door width alone. The second is assuming the same cabinet length fits a retail doorway and a cold-room doorway. The third is treating an air curtain chart as a final model selector before voltage, heat, mounting, airflow, and model-specific support have been checked.

Use the table at the end as a doorway reading aid. It is not a certification statement, a code approval, or a final installed-performance claim.