Rit Bellefleur of Accurate Commercial Door & Hardware Services, LLC sent me today’s Wordless Wednesday photo. This is a fire door in a school, and the bottom latch clearly serves no purpose. What’s the point?? This is why fire doors need to be inspected!
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I cut it three times, and it was still too short!
“But, but, I’ve been installing panic hardware for 30 years”, an installer once told me. (We were reviewing a similar situation.) My reply… “Well pal, you’ve been installing hardware wrong for thirty years!”
The bottom rod shouldn’t be there anyway.
IF they are going to leave the bottom latch there, they need to have a hndcp kick plate so a wheel chair will not get hung up on the door. Easier to just remove the bottom latch as long as the rating will still be good.
It takes extra skill to install it that bad…. But the floor scrub team will never have to deal with the curved scrape lines from miss adjustment…
some installers!
Fire plugs are the answer bottom latches work only 50% of the time in the hospitals i work in
Unfortunately the very people we depend on to back up our findings will not support us.
I was called to a day care church school. Some doors were missing from stairwells. Some doors had the wrong glass.
I advised them what they should do. They called fire inspector that had been passing the doors all along.
He advised them to clean the paint off the labels and the rest was fine.
I would not go back to install the 8 fire rated panics.
I’m at a loss because it’s the fireman that could die in those stairwells.
maybe the device was 2″ too short, and they thought that installing the panic bar higher would be a good idea. I guess not.
The only issue I see, is why did they install the bottom Rod, You are allowed to Install Top Rod Only on Fire Doors, which provides the Positive Latching required to mete Fire Code, by leaving the Bottom Rod and latch mech on the bottom of the door, they have created a safety issue for persons with a wheeel Chair or pushing a cart…
Jim,
They installed the bottom rod, presumably because it was part of the assembly. If what you mean by “You are allowed to install top rod only on fire doors” is that there is an available less bottom rod assembly (LBR) they could/should have used in lieu of a surface vertical rod (SVR) application, this is true. However, that’s not the same as suggesting the bottom rod should have been omitted from this installation. I’ve never seen an LBR assembly on a fire door with a rating > 20 min.* that does not require a fire pin and likely a more robust top-latching assembly and strike component. Translated: they did right by installing the rod (albeit too high), but they can’t pull the bottom rod off and call it good without consulting the hardware manufacturer to ensure that a fire pin, modified latch assembly, and more robust strike are not required. *Sargent does not require a fire pin on a 20 min. fire door LBR application, so my assumption is that it’s possible for other manufacturers to follow suit.