 The best kind of doors are the doors you have to explain. Welcome to Unhinge with the DoorDork. Today, we have a very special guest. Kevin Wehring, I am now the Director of Business Development for the Yale Commercial Team. Let's jump into the next one if you guys are ready. Wait, I like that. That's a clear definition of pulling when you're pushing, right? So this was at the Austin International Airport. I forgot the actual name of the airport, but literally hundreds of doors had the same setup. And I'm like, why did they go through and install a pool plate? And it took me forever to figure out the reasoning why, but can you guys figure it out? They need to pull the door shut at some point, right? Are these all delayed egress devices? They are, yeah, they do. They do have like the little sensor on them. I don't know if they're delayed egress, but they will probably sound pretty loud when you go out. The only thing, obviously I'd have to say from when the doors open and they have a lot of wind, they need one way to pull it closed and that's why it's here, but definitely confusing from looking at it from the inside out. Yeah, so that's what I noticed. There's no closers on any of these doors. Like they didn't install a single closer on any of these. And as far as I could tell, I couldn't see that if there was like a floor close or anything like that. It didn't look like it from the threshold. So they're literally just manually pulling all these doors closed instead of letting the closer do its job, right? Why would you pick that pole? That's a catch point though. Like why wouldn't you pick a closed loop? Yeah, I mean, you definitely can't have something like that sticking out on a exit, right? This is an emergency exit. Like that's gonna potentially catch someone as they're running out the door, right? Yeah, and it's like at eye level. I mean, I know you're tall, Benji, but for the rest of us, like that's gonna poke somebody right in their eye. One other little detail. It's really hard. The lighting wasn't great because all the sun was coming in on this side. Do you guys recognize this keypad over here? I can't even tell that that's a keypad. But it's one of the old scramble pads. So you guys remember the ones that would change the order of the number every time you had to type in your code. And again, there were hundreds of those at this airport. I think this airport needs a remodel, so. I would think that's a safe bet to say there. I walked through the entire airport and almost every single emergency exit had one of these door poles on it. That has to be a fairly recent addition, though, because nobody was really offering that style of door pull to, well, three years ago, right? Yeah, it makes me wonder, like maybe they missed a fire inspection or something like that, and like they got creative and they're looking for, or closer as fell or something like that. And they're like, well, let's just put a pole on it. Interesting if they had overhead conceals in this too. I can't really tell. And the track was mortised in. That's true. I didn't look up there to see. I often get very, very, very, very, You open the door. Just push it open. Nothing bad could happen. Airports are one of the places where I do hesitate taking pictures. You can get banned from no fly lists and stuff like that. If I see something, I'm still going to take a picture. I'm just going to do it kind of discreetly. Do one of these, like walk by. Okay, any last remarks before we give it a knocking score? I think we need a little bit more information, but not having a closers. If there truly isn't one is a big problem with this. And I would say they want to get that rectified. I'd be shocked if they had hundreds of doors like this that had no closers at all. So if it didn't have a closer, I would have to give it up at about a six or seven. If it's just to pull that door closed during the win there, I'd put this one down at a three or four. An interesting setup for sure. Yeah, I'm really curious. Maybe they did have overhead concealed closers. And like all of them just happened to be failing all at the same time. Maybe they've reached their life limit. I'm in the seven range because for fire safety, that's a huge catch point. I know it's fairly flush to the door and these are sort of recessed into the opening, but and just a user going through with baggage. I mean, because there's times where you're walking out to the tarmac at some gates like this. So now you're bringing all your baggage out and you're getting caught on there. And that's a fairly high pull that you can get hurt on. Closers or not, I think this is not the right pull for this application. I'm with you guys. It's not like terrible. Like someone probably wouldn't die if an emergency happened, but like it's a possibility for liability and injury. And I would say like, I always look at these kinds of situations and then I look around like the environment and say like, if the worst case scenario did happen, how many people would actually be going out this door and like what would be the effect of it? And the Austin Airport was extremely busy. It's a very big airport for the area and Austin's just a nice place to go to. And except for when it's 3000 degrees like it was when I was there. But I was thinking there'd probably be about 100-ish people that I'd be exiting out this exit just cause it's the closest one. And like if people are crowding up against it as they're running out the door like something could happen that could get in the way. Not too bad, but not great. Okay, ready for the final photo. Let's do it. There's a lot with this picture. I love the exit sign to the left and then the this door is for emergency only covered up by the chairs. Like a handwritten poster like you're giving your science project or something. Does it feel like the exit device is a little higher than it should be? I can't tell if it's just because of the molding on the door. So I'm a tall guy. We went line dancing one of the nights which was actually a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. And they had an all you could eat Austin barbecue buffet set up. And like it was really good food. Like if we were given the food to knock and score like that's gonna be prime. But they set it up right in front of this emergency exit. So this is me grabbing some chicken. I'm like, oh, I need to take a picture of this. But oh yeah, I'm a tall guy and my head was almost touching the ceiling. So it is a very small section of the restaurant. So it might still be compliant but it was high comparatively. I don't know. There's a lot of other things that are not compliant with this. Was it prepped for another lock at one point in time? It's definitely like a residential style door. I think it used to have a knob and a deadbolt that was filled in the dark. I was like, is there a deadbolt underneath there? But no, it was prepped for I think a knob and a deadbolt before. Well, at least they filled it in. They get a point for that one. I'm curious about the tripping hazard down at the bottom though. Is that a new gas getting that they're putting down there to keep a draft going through or what? I mean, it was very warm. And so maybe that was them trying to seal the, what I love is they have this little bucket of water. So if like a fire did start, you know, at least they've got something to like, and what do you think of that light right there next to all this plywood and like poster board? And like, I feel like that's just asking for a fire to start. And if not that, all the extension cords that are draped and shrunk throughout is, hey, you need an outlet. Just plug one in. There you go, right there. You know what this tells me is you probably shouldn't have eaten here because if this is what outside of the kitchen looks like, I wonder what inside of the kitchen looks like. Now, see me, I would say the opposite. This is absolutely the kind of place that you want to eat in. You know it's going to be good soul food for sure. Oh, it was dense and rich and it was delicious. Yeah, very good barbecue. I would definitely go there again, but maybe hopefully they haven't inspected before then. Oh, and this wasn't the only exit like this. They had zero exit signs that were mounted above. I think just because the height restraints, somehow they got away with this. If there is a fire and there is smoke, you can't see those exit signs anyway. So they might be onto something here. The lower the exit sign, the easier it is to see in a fire. One way to look at it. I think if there was a fire, this was all like plywood, like this was just going to like, we were all going to die anyways if there was a fire in there. So that would have been tragic because there was like 150 of us, you know, security professionals. That would have been quite the headline. Although there was only like three or four other like hardware guys there. The rest were like access control and cameras and software and all that jazz, which was cool. But they had no idea like Benji, why are you taking pictures all over the place? Like, well, let me tell you a little bit about this. And now some of them are converting to door hardware nerdism. All right, closing comments before we give this a final knocking score. I think we're ready to rate. You had me, you go first this time. I think it's probably in the seven range. I think it's certainly not ADA compliant. So I don't know if they are required to have ADA compliance if there exists, but if it's higher than... Four and 36. Wow, I need to look that up. That might be 35, actually. We might be on the edge here though. If that's above like a deadbolt prep. Anyway, ADA compliance may be an issue and then all the various other things we've talked about regarding fire safety. I'd say this is a solid seven. Yeah, so I'm actually going one higher than you. I'm going to an eight on this one. If I was trying to get out and I needed to look at that exit device and I saw the glow through the smoke and I started pushing on those chairs and the chairs didn't open. I'd be a little frustrated and upset that I wasn't going to the right spot. So that's definitely a tough one. The tripping hazard in front of the door, whatever that is, hopefully it's just a sheet or a jacket or something that somebody dropped. And that exit device definitely is higher than the 35 inches. So I've kind of put this one up there at a good old eight. Yeah, and that's only if you can get to it because the buffet was right in the way. Although you could grab a snack on your way out the door. No, I'm with you. It's probably definitely on the higher end. It's definitely not code compliant in a lot of different ways. Okay, well, thank you, Kevin, Mia. It's always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us today. Yeah, we had some interesting doorfills today. Some delicious ones as well. It's always a pleasure having you on this show. Join us for the next episode of Unhinged. Our doors are always open partially because they're unhinged. If you wanna be featured on a future episode of Unhinged or you have a picture to submit, leave a comment down below. Thanks for watching.