Since I started this blog I've often thought how great it would be if JQP (John Q Public) knew the basic requirements of fire and egress doors.  What if everyone who saw a locked egress door or a propped-open fire door had a way to change the situation?  Imagine the effect this could have on life safety!  In my imaginary world, I think of these informed people as door minions, except instead of serving an evil SuperVillian, they're helping to save the world.  OK, it might be a stretch, but I saw this article the other day, giving me hope that there ARE door minions out there...

I've talked about this before, but the question still comes up almost weekly - "What's the code-compliant solution when replacing a pair of doors in a 5'-wide opening?"

I recently received this photo from Michael Wojnarowski of Builders Hardware, and it reminded me of a Powerpoint presentation I ran across a while back.  The presentation was created by the Anne Arundel County Fire Marshal Division - Code Enforcement Bureau, and the topic is Maverick Bars.

I saw this door at a restaurant today.  The decor is meant to look like a garage, and it's pretty cool - I especially liked the naked closers.  I did wonder about the main entrance door though.  It's tough to tell from the photos, but the graphics from the wall run over the aluminum portions of the door and frame and across the glass, so the glass is tinted orange with the dark stripes running across.  You can barely see the word "extra" on the glass at the top of the door, but look at the window on the side of the vestibule - it's the same treatment that's on the door.  When I looked at it from my seat it looked dark orange just like the wall.

As promised, I found quite a few interesting applications during our stay at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital, which I will post here in the next few weeks.  I also received some reader photos in response to my plea for help in keeping this site supplied with posts that weren't too time-consuming for me while my daughter recovered from her surgery.  Thank you for the photos, as well as the emails to check on her progress.  We were able to go home on Friday as planned, and she's running around like nothing happened.