100% thermal-break aluminum
No vinyl. No wood core. No aluminum-reinforced composite. A continuous polyamide strut separates the inside and outside of every extrusion, so the frame doesn't conduct heat straight through or sweat in winter.
One specification on every door we build — thermal-break aluminum, 6mm glass, an upgraded bottom-hung track, upgraded rollers and seals, custom crated and delivered on an insured private carrier. Then warranted up to fifteen years, in plain language you can read before you buy.
Insulated & laminated glass
Folding & sliding hardware
Weather seals
Interior screens
Every item below ships on every Gladiator door and window. There is no premium package to buy up into. The parts that fail first on a cheap door are the parts we upgraded before you ever called us.
No vinyl. No wood core. No aluminum-reinforced composite. A continuous polyamide strut separates the inside and outside of every extrusion, so the frame doesn't conduct heat straight through or sweat in winter.
Most imported doors arrive with 4mm or 5mm lites. Ours are 6mm in a sealed insulated unit — stiffer, quieter, and far less prone to flex and edge-seal stress on wide panels.
An upgraded running surface set nearly flush to the floor. Panel weight goes down through the sill into the slab instead of hanging off the header, where the building can't help you.
Heavier-duty rollers and folding carriers than the stock hardware these systems normally ship with. This is the most common failure point on wide-opening doors, so it is where we spend first.
Compression seals at every meeting stile and a continuous perimeter gasket, adjustable in the field as the building settles. Warranted ten years — most schedules leave seals off entirely.
Powder coat applied and cured at the factory before assembly, custom colors available across the range. Not a laminate film wrapped over white extrusion to fake a dark color.
Frames are assembled and squared, glass is mounted, and hardware is pre-drilled and test-fitted at the factory. Your installer sets a finished system instead of building one on site.
Each order is crated to its own dimensions and moved by a private insured carrier — not dropped into a common LTL network. Crating runs about $1,000 a shipment and we absorb it.
You buy from the company that owns the specification and answers the claim. There is no dealer in the middle to route a problem through, or to close before year ten.
Everything a wide-opening door does wrong in year ten was decided in year zero.
In the extrusion, the glass thickness, and where the weight goes. That's why the engineering comes first on this page — it's what the coverage is written against.
These are the five places a large door either holds up or doesn't — and the reason we can put the terms in Sec. 04 in writing.
There are really only four ways to build a large door frame, and three of them are compromises you inherit for the life of the house.
Vinyl is cheap to extrude and can't span. It moves roughly twice as much as aluminum across a temperature swing and loses stiffness as it heats — which is why vinyl folding doors are sold with metal reinforcement buried inside the profile. It's also why extruded vinyl is typically offered in white and almond only; dark colors are usually a laminate film over white extrusion, with its own adhesion life.
Clad wood puts a wood core inside a metal skin. It looks right on day one, but the sill is where water ends up — any breach lets water reach a core that swells, holds it, and eventually rots, usually invisibly until the panel stops closing.
Untreated aluminum solves the movement problem and creates a thermal one: the frame becomes a straight bridge between outside and inside, and it condenses.
Thermal-break aluminum is the fourth option and the only one without a trade you have to live with. Two independent aluminum shells, mechanically locked to a continuous polyamide strut that carries load but not heat. The frame stays dimensionally stable, takes any color, and doesn't rot, soften, or need anything hidden inside it to hold its shape.
Glass thickness is the quietest cost cut in this category, because nobody reads it and everybody feels it. A 4mm or 5mm lite is cheaper, lighter to ship, and easier on undersized hardware — and on a ten-foot panel it flexes noticeably with wind and temperature.
That flex doesn't break the glass. It works the edge of the insulated unit. Every cycle strains the spacer and the primary seal, and a seal that's been flexed for a decade is the seal that eventually lets moisture in and fogs the unit from the inside. Going to 6mm cuts deflection sharply and takes that daily load off the exact component our fifteen-year glass coverage is written against.
Mass also buys you quiet. Sound transmission through glass is governed largely by weight, so a heavier lite is a quieter room — the difference people actually notice when a wall of glass faces a street.
This is the decision that determines whether your door still works in fifteen years, and almost nobody asks about it at the point of sale. A folding or sliding wall is several hundred pounds of moving weight, and it has to be carried somewhere.
Top-hung systems hang every panel from a track fixed to the header — a load suspended from the beam above your opening, permanently. That works as long as the header never moves. But headers do move: wood shrinks and creeps, framing settles, and long-span beams deflect by design. A header that drops even a fraction of an inch across a wide opening shows up immediately as dragging panels, uneven seals, and a lock that won't throw.
Bottom-hung — what we build — runs the panels on rollers in a sill track. The weight goes down through the track into the slab or structural sill, the one part of the assembly that isn't going anywhere. The header carries guidance only, not load. The track sits nearly flush for a low, easy threshold, and because the carriers are adjustable, a door out of adjustment is a service call with a hex key, not a structural conversation about your header.
A door frame does nothing for thirty years. The rollers, carriers, hinges and seals do all the work — thousands of cycles under several hundred pounds — and they are almost always the first thing to go. Which is precisely why they're the first place the price gets cut on an imported system.
We specify heavier rollers and folding carriers than these systems ship with as standard, and multi-point compression seals at every meeting stile with a continuous perimeter gasket. The seals re-adjust in place as the building settles, which is why we're willing to put a ten-year term on them when most schedules omit weather seals entirely.
The one thing we need from you is simple and non-negotiable: rinse the track and hardware with fresh water and a mild detergent every three months, more often near the coast. Salt and grit in a roller race is abrasive, and it's the leading cause of denied hardware claims across the industry. Keep a note of when you did it.
Two doors can carry the same spec sheet and be built completely differently. Cheap manufacturing doesn't show up in the literature — it shows up at the corners, in the wall thickness, and in what happened to the metal before it was painted.
A mitred corner can be crimped, which relies on deforming the metal to grip. Or it can be mechanically joined with a cleat and screw ports designed into the extrusion, then sealed — slower, more expensive, and it doesn't loosen as the frame is racked in shipping and installation. Thinner extrusion means less metal behind every hinge and lock fixing. And skipping proper pretreatment before the finish is invisible for about three years — then the coating starts lifting at an edge.
Don't take our word for any of this. Ask us these four questions, ask whoever else you're quoting, and compare the answers.
A door that arrives cracked is a claim nobody wanted and a schedule nobody planned for. So we spend real money on the part of the process you never see.
Crates are built to the dimensions of your panels. Frames are bundled separately and marked to your order, so your installer can stage the job in sequence instead of unpacking everything to find one sill.
Delivery moves on a private insured carrier at our cost, not through a common LTL network where a crate gets cross-docked and handled by people with no reason to be careful. Fewer touches is the entire strategy.
Photograph the crate before it comes off the truck and note any visible damage on the delivery receipt. It takes five minutes and is the most important thing you can do to protect a freight claim. Do not install a product you've already found a problem with.
Coverage begins on the date of shipment and applies to defects in materials and workmanship that render the product unserviceable or unfit for ordinary recommended use.
Category norm reflects publicly published competitor warranty documents current as of 2025. Full conditions, exclusions and limitations at Sec. 06.
None of this is unusual and none of it is difficult. Do these four and a claim is a phone call rather than an argument.
Open the crate and inspect the order as soon as it arrives. Report any visible defect or freight damage in writing, with photographs, before installation and before any finishing work. Installing a product you've already found a problem with accepts it.
Installation must be performed by a licensed or otherwise qualified installer, in a good workmanlike manner, following our published instructions and applicable codes — adequate header support, correct flashing and drainage, a level prepared sill, and no field modification.
Wash tracks, rollers and hardware with fresh water and a mild detergent at least quarterly, more often within three miles of saltwater. Keep a simple record — hardware claims require proof of maintenance.
Give us notice and a reasonable opportunity to inspect and perform before anyone else touches the product. Repairs or parts sourced elsewhere without our written authorization are not reimbursable and may void coverage on the affected component.
Written in plain language rather than buried in a PDF nobody opens. Every section below is part of the warranty.
This warranty runs to the original owner of the residence into which the product is first installed, for as long as that owner owns and occupies it, up to the terms listed in Sec. 04. All terms begin on the date of shipment.
If the home is sold, coverage transfers once, to one subsequent owner, and continues to run from the original ship date — it does not restart. It cannot otherwise be assigned or transferred. Commercial and rental applications are quoted and warranted separately; contact us for those terms.
We warrant the product we build. We cannot warrant it against the opening it goes into.
Published performance values from laboratory testing — including AAMA and NFRC figures — describe tested samples under test conditions. Components and manufacturing carry an inherent range of tolerance, and installation, building movement and maintenance all affect real-world performance. A variance in field performance from a published laboratory value is not a defect and is not covered by this warranty.
For a covered issue we will supply the materials needed to repair the product at no charge. Where repair is not practical, we may satisfy our obligation by shipping a replacement part or product to the original delivery address, or by refunding the original purchase price of the affected product. Discontinued items are replaced with the current product of nearest quality and appearance.
We require reasonable access to the product. Where access is not safe or practical, we may satisfy our obligation by supplying a replacement part without labor.
Where the product is installed at a destination outside the United States, the maximum warranty period is 2 years for glass and components and 10 years for folding system hardware. This limitation is based on the installation destination and does not apply to products installed within the United States, regardless of where they were manufactured.
This warranty sets out our maximum liability for the product and is your sole and exclusive remedy for any loss or damage arising from it. We disclaim all other warranties, express or implied, including merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, and any warranty arising by operation of law, trade usage or course of dealing.
We are not liable for special, indirect, consequential or incidental damages. In no event shall our liability exceed the original purchase price of the product.
Some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of implied warranties or of incidental or consequential damages, so the above may not apply to you. Where an implied warranty cannot be excluded by law, it is limited to the duration of this warranty. This warranty gives you specific legal rights, and you may have other rights that vary by state. Only an officer of Gladiator Window & Doors may modify or expand this warranty, and only in writing.
Claims come straight to us. There is no dealer network to route them through and no regional rep to track down.
Order number, purchase date and delivery location. Proof of ownership of the property. Photographs of the issue. For hardware claims, your maintenance records.
Submit the warranty claim form or call our team with the file above and a short description of the problem. We confirm receipt and tell you exactly what we need next.
We review, and where the issue is covered we supply the parts or product needed to make it right. Give us the opportunity to inspect before any other work is done on the product.
If you want coverage confirmed for your specific configuration, exposure or location before you place an order, ask. We'd rather answer it now than argue about it in year seven.
Gladiator Window & Doors — Jacksonville Beach, Florida · Mon–Fri 9am–6pm Eastern. This page summarizes the limited product warranty in effect at the date of shipment. Rev. 2026-08.