Last week I shared some photos of a coordinator bracket to accompany Mark Kuhn’s post, and several eagle-eyed readers pointed out the wall covering on the doors.  You are absolutely right – these fire doors have some issues.

Here they are (scroll down for my observations)…

I spent many years as a specwriter, working with architects who often wanted doors to disappear.  As we all know, egress doors are not allowed to disappear – they have to be readily distinguishable as doors, with an obvious method of releasing them for egress.

But beyond that, in my opinion, the doors in these photos do not “blend.”  A lot of time and effort went into making these doors look like the surrounding paneled walls, but believe me…they were noticed by many attendees of the BHMA meeting.  (Admittedly, we are a door-focused group!)

And as many of you pointed out already, I can almost guarantee that the added wall covering and wood cladding would not be acceptable per the fire door manufacturer’s listings and could negatively impact the performance of the assembly during a fire.  Here’s more about cladding on fire door assemblies.

What other “opportunities for improvement” do you see?

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