I’m pretty sure I asked for a PAIR of boots for Christmas, but Santa must have misunderstood.  I ended up with one walking boot after falling off of running fountain while trying to take the perfect photo of a door for y’all.  OK…actually I stepped off a little lip in a walkway while checking into our hotel in the dark and did some ligament damage.  We won’t know the extent of the damage until the swelling goes down.  BUT – I did get a photo.

While I was in the ER waiting for the radiologist to read my x-rays, I was in one of the exam rooms with my 11-year-old daughter, Aliya.  Out of the blue, she said, “Why is this chair in front of the door?”  I said, “It’s propping open the fire door.”  She responded, “That’s bad, right?”  Right!

All of the doors in this facility are marked with a little red “Fire Door” sign and all the exam room doors are propped open with chairs:

My new Christmas boot:

And speaking of Christmas…everybody seems to be having either ugly Christmas sweater contests or holiday door-decorating contests these days.  I checked out some of the door contest winners and I’m positive there are some code issues. At the risk of being called the Grinch, here are some rules to decorate by next year:

1) If the door is a fire door (check for the label on the door edge), you may not attach copious amounts of decorations to the door.  Signage is limited to 5% of the door area, and must be attached with adhesive (not screws or nails).  No signage may be applied to the glass.  I think the same limitations would hold true for decorations.

2) If you are decorating the egress side of the door, the door must be obvious and visible as an exit.  It must look like a door.  You can not turn it into a tree with gifts under it, or a reindeer stable.  You may be able to use this type of decorations on the non-egress side as long as the door is not in a fire separation and there aren’t other limitations on the amount of paper in the corridor.

3) The door must still be operable after the decorations are installed.  The hardware must not be covered, the giant fireplace mounted to the door must not inhibit the operation of the door.  If the door is on an accessible route, it must operate with less than 5 pounds of force (for interior doors), even with the life-size fake Santa attached to it.  The bottom 10″ of the door must not have any protrusions on the push side.

There are TONS of Christmas door decoration photos online…just check Google Images or the links below.  Here are a couple obvious issues on cross-corridor doors in a hospital:

http://www.sjhlex.org/newsletter/incommon/winter/vol4iss46.html
http://www.keysso.net/photogallery/current/people_events/2007/12072007-door_decorating_contest/index.htm
http://www.ironcountymcf.com/doorcontest.html

Happy Holidays to All!!!

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