 How does exit access affect egress regarding door hardware selection? That's a great question. I get this one a lot. Come on in and let's check it out. In a previous episode, we talked about means of egress and the definition. It's a continuous and unobstructed path of both vertical and horizontal egress travel from any occupied portion of a building or structure to a public way. And it consists of three separate distinct parts. The exit access, which is that portion of a means of egress that leads to an exit. It sounds simple, but let's take a deeper look at how that affects hardware because the egress side isn't always the egress side. Let's take a look first at egress through intervening spaces. This is from IBC 2018. Other additions are similar. Please make sure to consult your local or state code. Egress through intervening spaces shall comply with this section. And there are several exceptions. I want to focus on just this one today. We'll get into elevator lobbies and others in a future episode of Code Corner. But exception number three says an exit access shall not pass through a room that can be locked to prevent egress. It's pretty self-explanatory, and it makes a lot of sense. If you're trying to exit a building, you don't want your exit access to pass through a door that is locked. But what happens when the egress side, when it comes to an emergency? Here is an office building. Door 125 goes into this open office area, and the owner wants to lock the door on the right-hand side of the page of that door. So you've got to look, if you're writing the specification, if you're looking at the hardware, you've got to look at what's going on on this side. Whenever we have an occupied building or portion thereof that has 50 or more people, the doors have to swing in the direction of egress. Door 125 swings in the direction of this exit door 103, and door 101, the exit door on this side of the building, does swing out in the direction of egress. But because this is a business occupancy, I've got 8 in this conference room, 10 people in this conference room, 16 in this conference room, 8 in this area, 4 in this office area, a total of 70 occupants still does not make this an assembly occupancy. If that doesn't make sense, please go back and re-watch where our exit device is really required. That'll help make sure that you're super clear on that. But for this discussion, this side of the building needs access to two exits. They have access to door 101, that's one exit. That makes door 125 an exit access door. It's the only way the occupants on this side of the building are able to reach door 103. During normal business use, the owner wants this door to be locked so that somebody with a credential is able to get into the open office area. And this door 107 is egress from this open office area going through door 101, so it's fine to be locked from this direction. But this will have a lighted exit sign above it, or should, and therefore the only way to lock that door would be with a delayed egress device. It doesn't have to be an exit device, it could be a mag lock, but I can't lock this door, or the owner has to add another exit directly to the outside, which is what the architect ended up doing. But the point is, this door most people wouldn't think of as an exit access, you have to look at the whole picture. Here's another example, and it comes up a lot with stairwell reentry. If I re-enter on the fifth floor in this particular office building, the only way that I'm going to reach the other stair, the other exit stair, is through this elevator lobby. Therefore, at the time of a fire or other similar emergency, these doors have to be able to be unlocked, and they need to unlock very similar to a stair simultaneously tied to the fire alarm system. We'll talk about elevator lobbies more in depth, but you have to look at the floor plan, how do I reach those exits, and is that door subject to locking? If it is, then you may need to have a written variance for your hardware from the local authority to make sure that it's okay. Here's a dormitory, a residential occupancy. Here's a stair, there's a stair on this end, and the opposite end of this building is the mirror image. So we've got a boys' dormitory on one side and a girls' dormitory on the other. If you're in this lobby, you came up using the elevator, it's similar to an elevator lobby, you have to be able to access this other stair just in case this stair is blocked. And so this door now, this is the exit access side. Both sides of this door are technically the exit access side of that door, and not subject to locking or subject to a special locking arrangement that would allow you to be unlocked at the time of fire. For more information and continuing education opportunities, please visit Ossobloy Academy by clicking in the link in the comments below. Please click like and subscribe to this channel. You can follow me on Twitter at our consultant and or connect with me on LinkedIn for updates. If you have a code question, feel free to email me at kathryn.floweratossobloy.com. Thanks for joining me in the code corner today. My name is Katie Flower and my goal is to help you achieve safe purity in the built environment.