WWYD? Vision Lights in Wood Fire Doors
My question for you is this...if you supply, specify, or install wood fire doors, is the glazing typically installed in accordance with NFPA 80 - at the factory or in an authorized wood shop?
My question for you is this...if you supply, specify, or install wood fire doors, is the glazing typically installed in accordance with NFPA 80 - at the factory or in an authorized wood shop?
Rounding out our "intro" series of whiteboard animation videos...here's an introduction to hollow metal doors. The rest of our whiteboard animation videos can be found on the Allegion Training page, or on the Videos page of iDigHardware.com. What other topics would you like to see addressed in future videos?
I was so happy to arrive at the hotel last night and find this photo from Austin Bammann, of Central Indiana Hardware. This is a great illustration of the variations and unintended patterns that can occur with rotary cut natural birch doors ("To infinity...and beyond!")...
Questions on smoke gasketing continue to come up, so the Steel Door Institute asked me to write about it for their quarterly newsletter. You can subscribe to their newsletter here...
Quite a few people sent this cartoon to me, so I obtained permission to post it here. It looks like the "normal" people are starting to figure out the secrets of the door and hardware industry. Enjoy!
Yesterday's post was not ready in time for the afternoon notification, so in addition to today's Fixed-it Friday photo, there's a bonus set of photos from the Bronx Zoo. If you're reading this on the email notification, you should see the zoo link below. Happy Friday!
Last week I published a blog post on my excitement about the upcoming CoNEXTions event, which was cancelled later that day because of ongoing civil unrest in Baltimore. I received the Karpen Steel newsletter today which shares Rachel Smith's perspective, and I asked for permission to share this letter here...
The Hollow Metal Manufacturers Association (HMMA) is a division of the National Association of Architectural Metal Manufacturers (NAAMM), and publishes more than two dozen reference documents related to hollow metal doors and frames...
A common question when replacing doors and hardware during a renovation is whether one leaf of a pair can be “fixed” in place, or whether an opening can be eliminated completely. It’s very risky to make this decision without consulting the Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ), but it is helpful to understand some of the factors that could affect the location, size, and quantity of required exits before preparing your request for the AHJ...
Last year I wrote a couple of blog posts about tornado doors - one called Tornado Safety in Schools, which included articles and other information about tornadoes that had recently occurred in Oklahoma and Texas. The other post was Shelter from the Storm, which described changes to the 2015 International Building Code...
The 2010 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Standards for Accessible Design went into effect in March of 2012, but there are several requirements that continue to surprise architects and specifiers as well as door and hardware suppliers. These issues can be costly to resolve if they’re discovered after the doors and hardware are on-site, so it’s important to stay current on the requirements...
This is SO COOL. I LOVE it. I know it probably seems like it doesn't take that much to excite me, but when this hit my inbox, it really made my day...all because Dan Dateno of BR Johnson combined his sketching ability with his career in doors and hardware to illustrate alternate definitions for common door and hardware terminology.
I have been asked about door handing SO MANY TIMES over the years...hopefully with your help we can address the questions once and for all. Leave me a comment if I forgot anything!
Architects and specifiers may wonder why hardware consultants need so much detailed information – and why it makes us crazy when changes are made and we don’t know about them. It all starts with the door schedule…here’s why each field matters...
I have worked with architects who specified grout for fire-rated frames, but as far as I know this is not typically required by the listing procedures. NFPA 80 - Standard for Fire Doors and Other Opening Protectives does not state that grout is required...
Gary Huizen of Huizen's Locksmith Service posted this Wordless Wednesday photo on the iDigHardware Facebook page...how many times have you arrived on a jobsite to respond to a closing/latching problem and found something like this?
I'm in Las Vegas at ISC-West (come visit me in Allegion booth #20031 if you're here!), so I won't have time to write a post for today, but in case you missed my previous photos of the doors of Las Vegas...
A long time ago, mostly before my time, some wood doors had a dowel on the edge that would indicate the type of core that was used. Several people have asked me to post a chart...
Today's winner of the 5th-birthday gift card is Dan Droker of CCI Automated Technologies, who sent me some great photos from the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. It makes me happy to imagine some of you embarrassing your spouses and kids by taking door photos during family outings. My family has begun to automatically sense when a door piques my interest, and they make themselves scarce. Except the little one who wants to be in every picture...
To celebrate 5 years of iDigHardware, don't forget to send me some photos in exchange for a chance to win a $50 Amazon gift card!
Any theories about what's happening here? Steve Poe from Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies sent me the photo and we're perplexed.
On a weekend trip to Family Science Day, I saw these super-tall doors at the convention center:
Today I was able to spend some time on the trade show floor at CoNEXTions 2012, the Door & Hardware Institute conference. It was great to see so many old friends and some new products. My pal and code aficionado, Steve Bettge, tracked me down and escorted me to a booth where there was a product that was right up my alley.
I couldn't have said it better myself..."Mullion? Who needs a mullion when you can just turn the exit devices 90 degrees?" From Chris Steward of Steward Steel, by way of Jim Phillips of SBS Associates.
I just love when I ask a question and some of you actually answer me. Following up on yesterday's post about "The World's Heaviest Door", here are a few more big doors:
Brenda Dove of Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies spotted this door on the Energy.gov website, where they feature a new energy-related photo each week. In 1979, this was the world's heaviest door, weighing in at 97,000 pounds. I wonder if it still holds the record. Seen any big doors lately?
UPDATE: As of October 4, 2012, UL has reversed this directive. The bulletin can be downloaded here.
When I was in Florida a couple of weeks ago for the IAPSC conference, it also happened to be school vacation week so I brought the kids along for a visit to my parents' house. They all survived while I was in Miami Beach, so when I got back from the conference I took them to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure in Orlando. One of our Florida specwriters, Steve King, had written the hardware spec for the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and I couldn't pass up the chance to check it out.
This post was printed in the April 2012 issue of Doors & Hardware
As many of you know, I took some time off last week. The plugin I had installed to scroll random posts broke my mobile site so I had to uninstall it. Hopefully you all read that last delayed egress post in depth to keep you occupied. :-)
I spent last weekend in Stowe, Vermont with one of my BFFs and we stayed at an "inn," which seems to mean bigger than a bed and breakfast but not as modern as a hotel. As my friend said, "I got the keys...they're real keys - how quaint!" I won't get into how the lock on our room had to be unlocked with the thumbturn before you could turn the knob for egress, but I will share the completely inadequate mini-closer on the exterior door adjacent to our room. The door never closed and latched, and the kitchen staff hung out on the landing smoking butts (not the hinge kind). Good thing we had the high-security privacy chain on our room door.
I was at a security meeting for one of my projects recently, and I heard the security consultant refer to the "secured side of the door," meaning the inside - the area that is protected by the security system.
Every time I specify hardware for a door that swings into a pocket, a little alarm sounds in my head because at least 50% of the time there will be a problem that urgently needs to be fixed at the end of the job. This application requires coordination between the architect designing the pocket, the contractor building the pocket, and the distributor supplying the doors and hardware, and that's a lot harder than it sounds. The other problem is that when one pair on a project goes south, in most cases ALL of the pairs are a problem.
Jon Dudley of Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies sent me these photos of a school in West Virginia, where apparently this was not a mistake - it's the way the school wanted them. For the life of me I can't figure out why. Any ideas?
I was recently elected as a town meeting member for my town (a pretty large town - 68,000 people), and tonight I attended my first-ever town meeting. It was pretty interesting to see government in action, but I also found time to hunt down some old doors for you all.
I was reading an article about blogging in Inc. the other day, and one paragraph really resonated with me:
Every so often, I wonder what I'm going to write about on this blog after I've covered all of the code requirements for doors and hardware. I mean, it's a very specific subject area so at some point I could run out of questions. And then something comes up that I've never looked into, and I stop wondering. There will always be more questions. If hardware was easy, it would be called "easyware," right? :-)
The first time I ever saw a wicket door, it was for a post office project and I was working on the shop drawings. I haven't run into a whole lot of them since, but I saw a pair last weekend and risked the embarrassment of my friends to take some photos. The employee at the door said that I wasn't the first. :-)
As promised, I have some photos to post from my recent trip to Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut. I don't typically mention the locations of the photos I post, usually because I don't want to get in trouble for showing their code violations. Well, I'm not a gambler so I had plenty of time to look at doors, and I have no non-compliant door photos to post. I was pleasantly shocked. I saw two propped-open bathroom doors that had labels, but that's it. I don't even know why those particular doors were labeled, but in a facility with thousands of doors, thousands of building occupants (one website estimates over 40,000 visitors per DAY), and special security concerns, they're doing a great job with their fire and egress doors, as well as accessibility.
When I started this blog, my goals were to organize all of the code information I had into a searchable database, and to offer a more painless way to learn about hardware. I think one of the hardest things about starting out in this industry is the way most of us learn about it - at the School of Hard Knocks. There are some great classes available through DHI and other sources, but it can take a very long time to attend them all, which gives us plenty of opportunities to make mistakes. I know I've made my fair share over the years, so I wanted to help people learn a little bit at a time and hopefully make it as painless as possible.
Questions about frame labels have come up several times this week, so I guess it's time for a post. I've pulled together some information from various sources and I hope some of you will chime in with your input.
I've been to Nashville a few times, but somehow I missed seeing the replica of the Parthenon while I was there. Luckily I received some reader photos of the gigantic doors there, and I also found some photos on Flickr and obtained permission to share them here.
At the Boston Chapter CSI meeting tonight, we had a presentation by the appropriately-named "Woody" Vaughn of Vaughn Woodwork Consultants about the new Architectural Woodwork Standards. (I think I need a hardware-inspired nickname, but that will have to wait for another post.)
I'm having a couple of days of R & R in Burlington, Vermont, but the Doors of Burlington post will have to wait for a day when the weather is less inclement, or at least when I have a designated driver so I can hunt for doors from a moving vehicle. It has been tough to go door hunting when I'm on my own with three kids, a dog, and our two new Christmas kittens. In other words, I've got my hands full and I'm headed off the deep end (in my case, R & R does NOT stand for rest and relaxation!).
I recently needed to refer to a copy of HMMA-850, the NAAMM/HMMA standard for fire rated doors and frames. I was pleasantly surprised to find this standard on-line as a free download. Upon further digging, I found that almost ALL of the HMMA and SDI publications can be downloaded for free from their websites. There is a wealth of information there, including free downloadable specifications and ANSI standards. If you're an architect or specwriter, you can even request a complimentary bound copy (or CD) of the SDI Fact File which includes all of their publications. Click the links below to check out the list of standards available for download.