The photos and video for today’s Wordless Wednesday post came from Zachary Bass, Deputy Fire Marshal with the Asheville NC Fire Marshal’s Office.  Side note…it makes me SO HAPPY to know that AHJs visit iDigHardware!  I field a lot of questions from fire marshals and building officials, and I get some of my ideas for code change proposals from them.  🙂

The door shown here is in a factory occupancy, where a “screen door”/gate was added to allow additional airflow while the exterior door was propped open and the gate maintained some level of security.  Someone went to a lot of trouble and expense to fabricate and add this gate with panic hardware to the existing opening, right down to the castor to activate the exterior panic.

Unfortunately, this application created some code issues and the gate had to be removed.  This is not uncommon – what seems like a great idea for convenience, security, or another reason turns out to create code issues.

What code issues do you see?  And what are some other ways the needs of the facility could have been addressed?  Please share your thoughts in the comments and I’ll revisit this post on Friday.

Here’s the video of the gate in operation:

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