I saw a question posted in an installer forum on Facebook the other day, and it reminded me that I should write a “What’s that?” post on the topic.  These posts look at some of the important parts and pieces that help to ensure the proper installation and operation of door hardware.

The installer shared a photo of panic hardware running across a vision light in a door, and asked how this should be addressed.  One of the photos I shared in Christin Kinman’s case study on Monday had the same situation.

Longer vision lights in doors are more common these days, as the accessibility standards state that if a door has a vision light or sidelight, the bottom of at least one light has to be located no more than 43 inches above the floor.  This allows a building occupant using a wheelchair to see through the light.  Note that these standards do not specifically require the doors to have lights, but if there are lights, they must meet the height requirement (there’s more on this topic here).

With some pre-planning, the location of the light can be coordinated with the location of the panic hardware, or a midrail can be used to accommodate the hardware.  There are other advantages to midrails, which effectively divide a long light into two lights – one above and one below the hardware, but sometimes this isn’t caught until it’s too late.

So…what’s an installer to do when the panic hardware or fire exit hardware runs across the light?  Several of the other installers in the Facebook group jumped right in with the answer (I was so proud!).

For Von Duprin and Falcon panics, we offer glass bead shim kits (GBK), which raise the hardware off the face of the door so it can pass over the glass kit for the vision light.  The kit includes a shim for each end of the panic hardware, and for surface vertical rod devices the kit includes shims for the rod guides.

A few things to keep in mind…the shims are 1/4-inch thick, and some light kits or glass beads may be thicker than 1/4-inch.  Two sets of shims can be stacked for our panic hardware, but only one set of shims can be used for fire exit hardware.  The kits are specific to the panic hardware model number, so for example, the kit for a Von Duprin 22 series device will be different from a 99 series.  The door thickness must also be considered, to ensure that the proper length fasteners are supplied.

For reference, the installation instructions for Von Duprin’s glass bead kits are here.

Any questions?

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