Lift-and-slide vs regular sliding patio doors

Both slide, but the mechanism and what they can carry are different.

Regular sliding

The leaf rests on rollers the whole time. The seal is an interlock and brush pile that the leaf brushes past. Fine up to moderate leaf sizes and weights. Above roughly 150–200 kg per leaf, the rollers and the effort to move it become the limit, and the brush seal cannot fully close a large gap against wind.

Lift-and-slide

Turning the handle 180° lifts the whole leaf a few millimetres onto its rollers, clear of a compression gasket. You then slide it easily even at 300–400 kg. Let the handle go and the leaf drops back down onto the gasket, sealing tight all round and locking at multiple points.

Advantages:

• Carries much heavier, larger leaves — big glass walls to a garden or balcony.
• Far better weather seal when closed, because it seals on compression not a brush.
• More secure — multi-point locking engages as it drops.

Trade-offs: the gear costs more, the profile is deeper, and the head and floor track must be built to carry and support the weight.

When to specify lift-and-slide

• Leaf weight over ~200 kg or leaf height over ~2.6 m.
• A weather-exposed opening where a brush seal will not hold out driving rain.
• A client who wants a large, effortless, well-sealed glass wall.

Give us the opening width and height, the number of leaves and the glass make-up, and we will size the gear and the track.