Here's another door from the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport, Massachusetts. It's actually a curved door from the existing building attached to a new door. Because of the thickness of the two doors, wide throw hinges were used. Wide throw hinges are typically used when more clearance is required behind the door when open 180 degrees, not to be confused with swing clear hinges, which move the door out of the opening when open to 90 degrees (see below for comparison).
I haven't thought much about these since I was in DHI school (a really long time ago), but today I saw two types of paumelle hinges along with some olive knuckle hinges in the same facility. Beautiful hinges, but a very tough door and frame prep.
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.
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.
I was walking down the street the other day, and I noticed that all of the entrance doors on the building I was passing had A LOT of intermediate pivots. I didn't have much time to investigate, but I took a picture in case I decided to do a blog post about it someday. Well, someday is today because I just got an email from one of our specwriters about how to determine the required quantity of intermediate pivots.
What you're looking at is an existing fire rated frame with a new door that I saw recently during a fire door inspection. Most of the other doors that I inspected that day had steel hinge fillers to fill the existing hinge preps before the continuous hinges were installed. So why were a half-dozen or so filled with expandable foam insulation? Hmm...it's a mystery.
