I know that some of you are holding out on me…you were on your summer vacation, you saw a door and thought of iDigHardware, took some photos, and they’re still sitting there in your phone. Luckily, Austin Bammann of CIH remembered to send his beach pics along for Wordless Wednesday.
You can upload your photos on the photo submission page – it’s on the Tools menu above if you are looking for it in the future.
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If the store occupied two tenant spaces, and thus had two rear doors, and if the pictured door had no non-obvious obstructions (e.g. barriers outside it), could the pictured situation be “corrected” by removing one of the arrow indicators so the “exit here” sign instead showed “exit to left” or “exit to right”, perhaps combined with eye-level signage conveying the same message?
I understand the concept that if something looks like a usable egress door, it should be one, and would acknowledge that the door be more effectively concealed if obstructions on the other side of the door would make it unusable for egress. In this case, though, if someone who doesn’t see the door would be directed to a directly-usable exit, and someone who does see the door could move a display rack and then exit through it, both of those outcomes would seem to be just fine even if people wouldn’t always pick one or the other.
The last sentence really bothers me. IMO, one of the dangers in writing hypotheticals like this is that if a person who is inexperienced with Code compliance reads this article they could easily come to the conclusion that maybe the arrangement shown is acceptable.
If this door no longer serves as a compliant exit and if the building has sufficient exits without needing this exit, then the proper course of action would be to simply remove the exit sign.
The “outcome” Code compliance seeks is for building occupants to be able to confidently rely on building exiting components to function properly when needed in an emergency.
When an occupant has to resort to, for whatever reasons, picking a choice that includes moving display racks to exit then Code compliance has failed miserably.