I usually like to start with the quick and easy items on my to-do list, which is why it takes me forever to get to the big stuff. It's a fault, and I recognize that, but nobody's perfect. I tried to find the easy place to start this series of posts, but there seems to be only one logical place to begin - NFPA 105.
It’s official. I can’t hide from it any longer. People ask me about “smoke doors” almost every day, but if you know me you know that I have a lot going on, so whenever I try to scale the mountain of information about this topic I get sidetracked by the little things that need my attention.
On Thursday, May 13th, the New England Chapter of the Door & Hardware Institute will be holding our meeting at a new location - Vinny T's in Dedham, Massachusetts. The meeting topic is fire door assembly inspection (FDAI), and many of the local fire door inspectors will be participating in the presentations. The format is "cracker-barrel" style, where there are 5 or 6 short (10-minute) presentations about various sub-topics, with time for Q&A.
I apologize for the shortage of posts last week. I spent most of the week in Indianapolis (where our main office is located) or in transit to or from Indy. Believe it or not, the hardware at the hotel wasn't really blogworthy, although I did see some fire-rated doors without coordinators (ho-hum). The door to my room had a closer on it and closed most of the time. It was not latched when I checked in and went to my room for the first time, but there was no boogie-man, just a lovely cheese plate left by the catering department.
Someone asked me a question recently that I had to stop and think about. In the old days, wire glass could only be used in fire doors. It could not be used in non-rated doors. The question was, "Can the wire glass that meets the impact resistance requirements be used in non-rated doors?"
I spent the weekend in Portland, Maine, and I think I may be in love. What a beautiful city! I was there for my sister-in-law's baby shower and I think I made my brother and SIL a little nervous driving and door-hunting at the same time. It was kind of a rainy weekend so I'll do a more extensive post when I become an aunt in a couple of months, but here's a preview of some of the gorgeous doors around town. It's sad that the doors being installed today are so plain and generic. The door bloggers of the future won't have any cool photos to post!
A while back, I wrote a post about the requirement for fire doors to be self-closing, and I referenced a fire at the Rosepark Care Home in Uddington, Scotland. The fire occurred in 2004, but the results of the investigation are being reported now. I've been collecting news articles related to fire and egress doors on www.firedoorguide.com, and there are several articles there about the Rosepark fire.
Last night I went to a presentation at one of our 3 local middle schools, which I'm guessing was built in the 70's. What struck me right away was that the exterior doors are all about 10' tall, and the interiors are about 9' with a transom panel above. What a strange application for a school. They still seem to be working pretty well though.
There was a 9-alarm fire last week in Boston, in a 10-story condominium building. Several residents had to be rescued by firefighters, because they didn't evacuate the building immediately when the alarm sounded. One resident, who waited 10-15 minutes (by her estimate) to leave, found a stairwell full of smoke and a locked door to the roof. She was found at the roof door in full cardiac arrest with no pulse and no respirations. She was revived by firefighters and she survived. She's extremely lucky.
I'm not a big fan of glass doors because the options for hardware are so limited, but they do supply some interesting fail moments. You'd think that after multiple people ran into the same sidelite, they'd stick on some fake snowflakes or something...
It's a little scary how excited I get when I find photos in my inbox...mostly because it makes the subsequent post pretty easy and I don't have to try to make the doors I see during my own wanderings meaningful. I received these photos from one of our esteemed trainers, who travels around teaching people about hardware. Any hardware people who have attended a class in a hotel meeting room can vouch for the scary hardware applications you can find there.
Long before I started this blog, I had a personal one for my friends and family to keep up on what's going on in our household. Usually, I don't mix the two...most of my friends and family aren't very interested in door hardware, and I'm not sure I want my colleagues knowing that I sometimes squirt my kids with a spray bottle when they're misbehaving, but occasionally the lines get blurry.
This weekend we took advantage of the beautiful spring weather to get outside and soak up some Vitamin D at a local farm and on an Easter boat cruise. Lots of sun and signs of spring, but not a lot of doors.
I think I've seen so many non-code-compliant doors that I'm becoming numb to them. In the old days I would be spurred into action by the sight of a blocked exit or propped-open fire door. Yesterday I was at the local bagel joint and I saw their marked emergency exit blocked with stored high-chairs. No surprise. I went to my chiropractor's office and in the 3-story stairwell, two doors were propped open by the construction crew doing a 2nd-floor office fit-up, and the third floor door's latchset had been removed and replaced with a push plate and pull. Ho-hum.
