Okay, yall. Time for another locks and doors post. Bear with me, because this could maybe save your life???
Let’s talk about fire code!!
So, the big thing about having a building is there are a lot of laws requiring you to be allowed to get out of them. There are a few exceptions, jails and institutional facilities mostly, but essentially fire code says that a door must have one-touch egress. What that means is that you have to be able to get out of a door in an emergency. Exterior doors must be out-swinging, for instance. Even sliding doors like these:
Must swing out like this:
And legally cannot be locked when the building is occupied. So, yknow, push em! Run!
Now let’s get to the juicy part: have you ever seen a sign like this?
As a security professional who does put alarms on doors, signs like this are almost always bullshit. Here’s how to tell, with a handy little checklist:
1. Is the sign on the door itself, or on a device of some kind?
If the device has something written on it saying this, it probably will be loud as fuck when you open it.
We’ll get back to those in a second, but let’s assume it’s just a sign on the door.
2. Does it have a door position sensor along the edge?
The most common type of DPS is this guy that you’ve probably seen before:
These are commonly tied into bigger alarm systems, think burglar alarms. They CAN be hidden inside of the door as well, so this is NOT surefire, but these are super common. This is the wired variety, but there are also wireless ones.
3. Is there a siren present?
Exactly as it sounds. Things that make a lot of noise have to be of a certain size, and are almost always very clear in their intention. Think a big siren horn, but this guy is also really common:
That’s how you determine whether the sign is bullshit or not, but remember those crash bars i mentioned, with the big red label? That is a DETEX crash bar, and here are some other detex alarmed exit devices:
Do these guys make a lot of noise? Yes, probably, if the 9 volt battery inside of them has been changed this year. But the thing that really matters is that these things by default do NOT send any signal to literally anything. They are a button with a siren on them. When you press the button, the loud noise goes off, and that is it. Somebody turns the key in the key cylinder and then it stops. It doesn’t alert anyone out of earshot, it doesn’t call the cops, and it doesn’t increase the security of your business. Thats why you read this, right? Because you want to secure your business? ;)
