These Fixed-it Friday photos came from Steve Griffis at Federal Lock & Safe.  Steve was questioning the legality of this application (he’s not responsible for this installation).  Although it’s not one of the most beautiful solutions that I’ve seen, I couldn’t think of a code issue as long as the hold-opens are above the minimum clear headroom of 80 inches.  What do you think?

We may see banks of doors with hold-opens more often, as schools consider how to compartmentalize the building for security.  Cross-corridor doors and doors to assembly spaces could be kept locked but held open – during a lockdown, one switch would release the magnetic holders and the doors would close.  Since the levers are already in the locked position, the doors will be locked to prevent access as soon as they are closed (still allowing free egress, of course).  There is a better way to hold open a bank of doors, and I wrote a blog post about it here.

  

I need a favor!  I’ve been having trouble with the spam blocker when people submit comments.  If some of you would leave a comment, that will help me test out the fix.  If you have trouble commenting, please send me an email and tell me what happened.

You need to login or register to bookmark/favorite this content.