Lori Greene

About Lori Greene

Lori is the Manager, Codes and Resources for Allegion, and the creator of iDigHardware. With more than 35 years of experience in the door and hardware industry, in her current role she focuses exclusively on the code requirements that apply to door openings.

Smoke – NFPA 80

NFPA 80 - Standard for Fire Doors and Other Opening Protectives, is a document which most of us in the hardware industry began studying in our earliest hardware school courses and refer back to throughout our careers.  This standard is THE publication on fire doors, and is referenced by all of the codes and standards used in the U.S. that have anything to say about fire doors.  You'd think that because of the close relationship between fire doors and smoke doors (some fire doors ARE smoke doors, after all) that NFPA 80 would have something to say about smoke.  As it turns out, not much.

By |2014-05-28T19:57:32-04:00May 2nd, 2010|Fire Doors, Smoke|13 Comments
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Smoke – NFPA 105

I usually like to start with the quick and easy items on my to-do list, which is why it takes me forever to get to the big stuff.  It's a fault, and I recognize that, but nobody's perfect.  I tried to find the easy place to start this series of posts, but there seems to be only one logical place to begin - NFPA 105.

By |2016-03-02T10:31:04-05:00April 30th, 2010|Fire Doors, Smoke|2 Comments
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Smoke – The Series

It’s official.  I can’t hide from it any longer.  People ask me about “smoke doors” almost every day, but if you know me you know that I have a lot going on, so whenever I try to scale the mountain of information about this topic I get sidetracked by the little things that need my attention.

By |2012-01-27T22:07:34-05:00April 29th, 2010|Fire Doors, Smoke|1 Comment
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Don’t Get Burned

On Thursday, May 13th, the New England Chapter of the Door & Hardware Institute will be holding our meeting at a new location - Vinny T's in Dedham, Massachusetts.  The meeting topic is fire door assembly inspection (FDAI), and many of the local fire door inspectors will be participating in the presentations.  The format is "cracker-barrel" style, where there are 5 or 6 short (10-minute) presentations about various sub-topics, with time for Q&A.

By |2017-03-09T08:56:39-05:00April 25th, 2010|FDAI, Fire Doors|3 Comments
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I'm Back!

I apologize for the shortage of posts last week.  I spent most of the week in Indianapolis (where our main office is located) or in transit to or from Indy.  Believe it or not, the hardware at the hotel wasn't really blogworthy, although I did see some fire-rated doors without coordinators (ho-hum).  The door to my room had a closer on it and closed most of the time.  It was not latched when I checked in and went to my room for the first time, but there was no boogie-man, just a lovely cheese plate left by the catering department.

By |2012-01-27T22:07:34-05:00April 25th, 2010|Funky Applications|0 Comments
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Glass (and Glasses)

Someone asked me a question recently that I had to stop and think about. In the old days, wire glass could only be used in fire doors. It could not be used in non-rated doors. The question was, "Can the wire glass that meets the impact resistance requirements be used in non-rated doors?"

By |2013-02-09T01:06:14-05:00April 20th, 2010|FDAI, Glass|1 Comment
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Portland Preview

I spent the weekend in Portland, Maine, and I think I may be in love.  What a beautiful city!  I was there for my sister-in-law's baby shower and I think I made my brother and SIL a little nervous driving and door-hunting at the same time.  It was kind of a rainy weekend so I'll do a more extensive post when I become an aunt in a couple of months, but here's a preview of some of the gorgeous doors around town.  It's sad that the doors being installed today are so plain and generic.  The door bloggers of the future won't have any cool photos to post!

By |2013-02-09T01:05:38-05:00April 19th, 2010|Beautiful Doors|1 Comment
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Rosepark Care Home

A while back, I wrote a post about the requirement for fire doors to be self-closing, and I referenced a fire at the Rosepark Care Home in Uddington, Scotland.  The fire occurred in 2004, but the results of the investigation are being reported now.  I've been collecting news articles related to fire and egress doors on www.firedoorguide.com, and there are several articles there about the Rosepark fire.

By |2024-06-18T22:22:43-04:00April 15th, 2010|FDAI, Fire Doors|0 Comments
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Middle School Entrance

Last night I went to a presentation at one of our 3 local middle schools, which I'm guessing was built in the 70's.  What struck me right away was that the exterior doors are all about 10' tall, and the interiors are about 9' with a transom panel above.  What a strange application for a school.  They still seem to be working pretty well though.

By |2012-01-27T22:07:34-05:00April 13th, 2010|Automatic Operators, Electrified Hardware, Funky Applications, Panic Hardware|7 Comments
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Boston Back Bay Fire

There was a 9-alarm fire last week in Boston, in a 10-story condominium building.  Several residents had to be rescued by firefighters, because they didn't evacuate the building immediately when the alarm sounded.  One resident, who waited 10-15 minutes (by her estimate) to leave, found a stairwell full of smoke and a locked door to the roof.  She was found at the roof door in full cardiac arrest with no pulse and no respirations.  She was revived by firefighters and she survived.  She's extremely lucky.

By |2021-11-07T22:17:41-05:00April 12th, 2010|FDAI, Fire Doors|0 Comments
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Hotel Meeting Rooms

It's a little scary how excited I get when I find photos in my inbox...mostly because it makes the subsequent post pretty easy and I don't have to try to make the doors I see during my own wanderings meaningful.  I received these photos from one of our esteemed trainers, who travels around teaching people about hardware.  Any hardware people who have attended a class in a hotel meeting room can vouch for the scary hardware applications you can find there.

By |2012-01-27T22:07:34-05:00April 7th, 2010|Funky Applications, Means of Egress, Reader Photos|1 Comment
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The Gift of Hardware

Long before I started this blog, I had a personal one for my friends and family to keep up on what's going on in our household.  Usually, I don't mix the two...most of my friends and family aren't very interested in door hardware, and I'm not sure I want my colleagues knowing that I sometimes squirt my kids with a spray bottle when they're misbehaving, but occasionally the lines get blurry.

By |2014-03-28T16:55:26-04:00April 5th, 2010|Door Closers, Funky Applications|1 Comment
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Stairwell Doors

I think I've seen so many non-code-compliant doors that I'm becoming numb to them.  In the old days I would be spurred into action by the sight of a blocked exit or propped-open fire door.  Yesterday I was at the local bagel joint and I saw their marked emergency exit blocked with stored high-chairs.  No surprise.  I went to my chiropractor's office and in the 3-story stairwell, two doors were propped open by the construction crew doing a 2nd-floor office fit-up, and the third floor door's latchset had been removed and replaced with a push plate and pull.  Ho-hum.

By |2014-04-14T11:34:19-04:00April 1st, 2010|Fire Doors, Means of Egress|4 Comments
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Doors of the Hurva

It has been a while since I've received a new batch of photos from Israel but these were worth the wait.  The Hurva is a reconstructed synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem, with a long, storied history.  Construction on the original synagogue began in the early 1700's, but the unfinished building was destroyed in 1721.   It was rebuilt in 1864 and destroyed again in 1948.  The most recent reconstruction began in 2005, and the reconstructed synagogue was officially opened on March 15, 2010.

By |2016-01-06T11:18:38-05:00March 29th, 2010|Beautiful Doors, Reader Photos|0 Comments
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Stats

As I've said before, I often look at my stats and see how people arrived at my blog.  I see a lot of people searching for information about fire door inspection and other information about fire doors, when to use panic hardware and various egress questions, and plenty of accessibility questions.  Sometimes people arrive searching for something a little different, so I thought it would be fun to share these requests on occasion.

By |2012-01-27T22:07:35-05:00March 27th, 2010|General Info|3 Comments
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Triangle Factory Fire – 99 Years Ago Today

The fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City on March 25th, 1911, claimed 146 lives - mostly young immigrant women.  Building owners locked the exit doors to keep the workers in and the union organizers out, so when a fire broke out on the 8th floor it was impossible for some of the 600+ workers on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors to escape.  The fire escape was not sufficient to hold the number of fleeing occupants, and collapsed.  Firefighters' ladders were several stories too short, and water from the fire hoses could not reach the upper floors of the building.  Sixty workers jumped to their deaths.

By |2021-06-07T14:56:08-04:00March 25th, 2010|FDAI, Fire Doors, Historical, Videos|0 Comments
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Full Height Pulls

No matter how much time I spend thinking about doors and hardware (that's so sad), there's always someone waiting in the wings with a question or problem I haven't thought of yet.  When I worked for a hardware distributor, that usually meant that because I had never thought about that particular issue before, I had doors on a jobsite that were going to cost us time and money to fix.  Now that most of my work is earlier in the process (spec-writing), there's usually plenty of time to catch any coordination issues before the doors are actually fabricated.

By |2013-02-08T21:42:02-05:00March 23rd, 2010|Push/Pull|2 Comments
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Interlocks

I went to see an architect on Friday, for what I thought would be a 2-hour meeting to discuss the security requirements for a new project.  3 1/2 hours later (time flies when you're talking about hardware!) I emerged to the sunlight (and the parking ticket), after literally resorting to cheerleading to get the architect through one more floor of the building (Her: "Lori, my brain hurts."  Me: "Come on!  You can do it!!").

By |2014-10-08T09:11:50-04:00March 21st, 2010|Electrified Hardware, Videos|3 Comments
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Spring Hinges

After my post about the Parkside West fire, a couple of people have asked me what I have against spring hinges.  I'm not one to discriminate against hardware of any function, style, or finish, but I also like things to do what they're supposed to do.  If I could get my kids to act more like cast iron door closers, I'd be a happy camper.  I'm not picking on spring hinges here - Ives makes spring hinges and is also one of the brands that keeps a roof over my head.  They just need to be used for the right applications.

By |2014-01-08T23:55:59-05:00March 17th, 2010|Accessibility, Hinges & Pivots|8 Comments
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Tomb Doors

Last week I attended a security meeting for a new horticulture building at the Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  I've written hardware specs for hundreds of projects but never a building for a cemetery.  I had never been to Mt. Auburn, so I looked it up on Google Maps, my first clue that this was not your typical cemetery.

By |2016-04-05T20:31:44-04:00March 15th, 2010|Beautiful Doors|3 Comments
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Parkside West Fire

Last Tuesday night, approximately fifty people were left homeless by a fire at the Parkside West Apartments in New London, Connecticut, which apparently began on a stove in a 3rd-story apartment.  One of the newspaper accounts of the fire investigation reported that the fire marshal stated "in the third-floor apartment where the fire is believed to have started, a weatherstrip prevented the door from closing, allowing smoke to spread."

By |2013-02-08T21:40:33-05:00March 13th, 2010|FDAI, Fire Doors, Videos|1 Comment
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Museum Hardware

Two of my defining projects as a hardware consultant have been the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.  One of our other specwriters, Greg Thomson, currently has two museum projects in progress - the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard.

By |2014-11-25T23:21:47-05:00March 8th, 2010|Funky Applications|3 Comments
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Help Wanted

Someone emailed me last week to ask if Ingersoll Rand was hiring.  Good question - it's been a really long time since I've perused the want ads.  Back in 1987, I was laid off from my job as a draftsman for an aluminum storefront supplier and had to go on the hunt for a new job, but since then the jobs have usually found me.  The hardware business is very small, which is great because we all know each other, but sometimes it can be a little awkward.  About 10 years ago a recruiter called to ask if I was interested in a job, and not only did I know the person who currently held the job, he didn't know he was leaving yet!  Yikes!

By |2016-07-20T10:57:09-04:00March 7th, 2010|General Info|0 Comments
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Anti-Ligature Knob

I got a call this week from a facility that needed to replace existing locksets with an anti-ligature product.  If you're not familiar with anti-ligature hardware, it's designed for use in mental health or detention facilities, to help protect patients or inmates from self-harm by minimizing the attachment points on the hardware.  Anti-ligature hardware is just one part of a safe environment for facilities with special needs, along with tamper-proof plumbing, mechanical, and electrical devices, break-away shower rods and bars, impact-resistant glass and mirrors, etc.

By |2012-01-27T22:08:02-05:00March 4th, 2010|Locks & Keys|16 Comments
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Photo Gallery

In case you haven't noticed, there's a new photo gallery tab at the top of the page.  The gallery includes thumbnails of some of the photos I've used in previous posts, and when you click on the thumbnail it will take you to the applicable post.  (If any of them take you to the wrong post, let me know!)

By |2012-01-27T22:08:02-05:00March 3rd, 2010|General Info|1 Comment
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Full Surface Hinge

I've been writing a lot about fire doors lately, and specifically about what bad condition many existing fire doors are in.  The codes have always required fire doors to be kept in good working order, but with the specific requirement for the annual inspection of fire doors it will hopefully bring more of these deficiencies to light.

By |2012-01-27T22:08:02-05:00February 27th, 2010|Fire Doors, Funky Applications, Reader Photos|1 Comment
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Costa Rican Security

The picture at right has nothing to do with this post, but isn't it BEAUTIFUL?!  I had no idea that I had captured this sloth so well until I was putting a photo book together for my daughter's preschool class over the weekend.  I took the picture in Caño Negro, and the sloth was waaaaaaaaayyyyyyy up in a tree, but he must have put his face into the sunbeam just as I took the photo.  I love it!

By |2012-01-27T22:08:03-05:00February 15th, 2010|Costa Rica, Gates|0 Comments
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More Costa Rican Egress

When we drove through Santa Elena, we noticed a restaurant with a tree growing up through the middle of it.  It looked pretty cool, so we headed there for lunch after our 3-hour morning hike in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve and before our afternoon hike at the Selvatura Hanging Bridges. (On the verge of passing out from exhaustion later that evening, we realized that it was only 7:16 p.m.!)

By |2012-01-27T22:08:03-05:00February 12th, 2010|Costa Rica, Means of Egress|2 Comments
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Costa Rican Egress / Fire Protection

The hotel with the treacherous handicap ramp (see previous post) was actually a very nice little hotel, but it had some other code-related issues.  I think all of the issues stem from the lack of stringent building codes in Costa Rica, but they're still a little scary for travelers who happen to be door hardware consultants.

By |2024-06-06T11:59:17-04:00February 10th, 2010|Costa Rica, Fire Doors, Means of Egress|2 Comments
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Caño Negro

Yesterday we went to Caño Negro, a wildlife refuge near the Nicaraguan border.  I saw no doors of note, but I did see a mother sloth with her baby, which was SO COOL!! We saw tons of other animals including iguanas and other lizards, caymans, white-faced and howler monkeys, at least 20 different kinds of birds, and 3 other sloths.  It was a really great day.

By |2012-01-27T22:08:03-05:00February 7th, 2010|Beautiful Doors, Costa Rica, My Photos|2 Comments
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La Fortuna

I don't really like to fly. I know about all of the airline safety statistics, but I just don't like being confined and especially tens of thousands of feet up in the sky. I don't like turbulence, even if it IS just bumpy air. I'm not buying it.

By |2012-01-27T22:08:03-05:00February 7th, 2010|Costa Rica, My Photos|0 Comments
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Come Here Often?

If you visit this blog on a regular basis, you've probably noticed that there's been a brief lull in posts. I could blame technical difficulties, illness, writer's block, or a natural disaster, but the reality is that I've been preparing to go on vacation. A real vacation where my cell phone doesn't work. Hard to believe, I know. Those of you who are getting ready to point out that it's not a real vacation if I take my netbook with me can just hush.

By |2012-01-27T22:08:03-05:00February 4th, 2010|Costa Rica|2 Comments
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