 The best kind of doors are the doors you have to explain. Welcome, welcome to Unhinged with the DoorDork. Today we do have a very special guest, Alex Bouchel with learnglazing.com. Not too docking bad. Should we jump on to the next one? This one might take a second and it kind of comes with a story. Cause I- Is only one of these an exit or what's going on here? Only one's labeled an exit. And it's just a regular vestibule. I'm not seeing any panics on any of these doors. No, no panics. This is a large commercial building. You got a double four and then you got single doors on the sides. So I don't understand why there's so many doors here. There are more doors on the left too. What the purpose is? Or is that? Yeah, those are doors. Yeah, that's what I was looking at. So those looks like doors because I don't see- I mean it looks like there's- There's no hardware. Well at the top it looks like there's right? Operators. It looks like there's closures. Yeah, there's mag locks. They're all mag locked closed. So this could be obviously, depending on location, this could definitely be the vestibule in the center would be for temperature control, right? You want to make sure that when the wind is out or the cold is out and all that stuff. The side ones would be better and faster or egress so you don't have to go through two sets of doors. So I wonder if that's kind of like the idea. Here's that on the way out, you don't need people to go through two sets of doors where they can just exit the other ones. So the side ones would be maybe locked from the outside and only accessible from the inside. Yeah, that would be ideal is if you could exit from the inside. But without the panics, wouldn't they have to be unlocked the whole time? Or are we talking some sort of motion sensor? Like what's happening there? So yeah, they are mag locked. There is no motion sensor and that's the problem. It's hard to tell. So let me explain. I was staying at a hotel and there was a coffee shop in the hotel next to it and there was some retail space and this was the retail space that I went over to. And I went to exit out, you know, if you didn't know anything about codes or anything like that, which door would you generally walk through? Exit, the one that says exit. The one that says exit, yeah. Yeah, it's got the carpet and everything. I would say natural people, like the people would naturally kind of go through the middle door because that's the door they probably entered through originally. It also has the layout with the lobby as well because I just kind of came around the corner. I was just heading outside. I wasn't like thinking twice about it. And I went right up to these middle doors and I couldn't get out. It was locked. I was like, okay. And I saw that that had Maglocks because there's no locking hardware on it. And so the Maglocks have to be on some kind of timer but where's the emergency override or where's the Rex on there? And there wasn't. I mean, technically it's not labeled as an exit but it's a natural path of the building. And this probably should be labeled as an exit as well as this because it's a large building and the occupancy in this building. I mean, I don't know. You see the buildings around it. It was at least 13 stories high. And if something happened in this building and people were mass egressing and these were still locked and they couldn't be shut off, they might be tied into the fire alarm. And I know this is a lot to process but technically they do have an exit here. And if all the lights went off people probably would go that direction. But this was like the more natural flow of traffic. And it was early in the morning. So maybe they just have it during like the early morning and night they lock it. But even then something could happen during all that. But yeah, this door was locked. This door was locked. And this door did have a Rex attached to it. So you could exit out this freely but just like if someone was panicking and running through this it could pick up and cause some problems. I would definitely agree that whatever point of entry you used would be natural to feel that that's where you have to leave, right? This was a mall or anything like that at school. People tend to go right back out the same doors they came in because they worked the first time, right? You didn't slam into it with your face or anything. So that one was a good one. I'm shocked that what seemed like the primary doors are not the ones that they wanted to use. That is interesting. I mean, I see the exit one on the other one which would have drawn me to that one. But no, fair point. Those seem like the major or like the primary path for everybody. And just the occupancy level of this type of building I mean, alone would require, I mean all of those at least if not more having and I'm sure there was some other emergency exits and like stairwell exits and stuff like that. But in a major lobby of a large retail environment and hotel, it was like a mixed space environment. It's, I can only imagine trying to keep this secure because it was downtown. It wasn't a very good neighborhood. I understand the security side of it but you still have to allow that free egress to happen. Yeah, but it's almost deceiving, right? Because if you're so worried about security then why have all the extras and not just worry about the primary ones and lock those and in a way that is secure but also cold compliant. Was there another entrance? I'm assuming you didn't come in through this way. No, I was trying to leave this way. It's two hotels that were kind of stacked up to each other and they shared the retail space below. So I was just like some sort of lobby in between them like a corner. And so I came down and went out this side because I wanted to go for my morning walk with my coffee. I grabbed my coffee and went out this way and couldn't get out. So that caught. So am I correct in assuming that you're the person that slammed into that door? I did slam into that door. Yeah. I was just kind of like, oh, dang it. Glad I didn't like smash my coffee all over and spray it all over me and that. So you tried the left and you tried the right and then you started looking around. So I tried to go through these doors. I noticed they were locked and immediately I was like, oh crap, that's not a good sign. So I stepped back and take this picture. I tried the left side. It's locked. Then the right side let me out. So. You tried the right last. It was tucked up against the wall. It wasn't like the natural flow of the building. Like this was like their main entrance and exit. So I don't know. It felt wrong. Like you said, it could have been the time of day. Because it's mixed use space. I'm sure there's like, is it retail? Is it hospitality? Like, yeah. Right. Once you have two hotels, you're going to have a high occupancy. Yeah. And I wasn't the only one that was going this direction. And several other people went and tried the same doors that I did and like, man, this is not user friendly. And then some of the people that I watched for a second actually went there, tried the doors that they were locked and then went back to the other lobby and went out the other side. So. They assumed they were just trapped in there. That's fine. They just assumed they were trapped and they were fine with it. Well, there was no fire. That's why they were fine with it. I hope the mag locks were tied into a fire alarm. But even if they weren't, they should have some kind of emergency override or panic hardware set up in a way that releases the mag so you could escape in an emergency. Cause not all emergencies are fire emergencies. So. There's a lot of really pretty panic hardware that looks almost exactly what's going on there with just that one return on the inside. So. Yeah. They probably would not have been a problem if that's what they were concerned about. Yeah. And I'm sure they did this all for aesthetics. Plus those are double pools. That's a Norman door there as well. I know. I know we all know to push out on the way of egress but the average person will probably grab that and like pull because that's the natural thing to do. So hashtag Norman door, thanks Don Norman. It's a pretty opening. It aesthetically it's very appealing. And I understand the architects designed it. Lots of natural lighting coming in. I don't know more about the glazing side of that. What is the wall? The curtain wall. Yeah. It's a curtain wall. Yeah. Anything to call out on that end, Alex, that you notice? It's weird because it's hard to call stuff like that out without seeing whatever's holding it rather than the system itself. The system looks good. I'm not super excited about the difference in some of the pieces of glass. I mean, I don't know if it's just the angle or what's going on, but in the photo here on the top left-hand side, you got that triangular shape of glass on the top. And then right below it, it feels like those first two items, those first, those two are like different sizes. I don't know if that's just me or what's going on. Maybe it's just the way that the light's hitting it. But anytime there's like a difference in size, like they just divide the whole thing evenly and make it nice. Yeah. Like someone mis-measured something. That kind of feels like a mistake right there. Yeah. I mean, it might be the same size. It just, for me, that left window looks slightly larger than the right windows. And then the triangle all the way at the top to stay out of those, that framing is a little strange too. But you are going to extra divide that just to have another smaller piece. Cause anytime you have another mullion, you're asking for another piece of potential leak areas, right? You got more joints and a lot of things going on. More holes you have to let out and so on. And on the bottom right too, like the fact that that's a swing door and you got to the other side, you got to double those nice like twin doors. Like I don't understand why make those different too. It just, it feels like there's a lot of parts coming in in the same space. And I guess I'm asking why they couldn't be the same. Are we sure those are doors on the left? I mean, they look like doors, but. Yeah, no, they're doors. I went up to them. You can see there's a little bit of sunlight coming up. Yeah, I did. And obviously what looks like the closures on the top. There wasn't any hardware on those. I'm guessing they had a operator. I don't remember if they. Yeah, but there's the circles like hardware was there. Yeah. And they took it off like. That's what I see too. I see like the six little plugs or something. Because it was kind of a downtown area, I'm guessing maybe they've took those pulls off to keep people from trying to pry open these doors. Because pools are one thing it does give you leverage to try to break into institution. If you don't need the pools on the outside of the door, just remove them. Like that's, that's a great way to prevent vandalism and people breaking in is like, can't grab onto anything to pry open if it's just a door. Hey, when it's glass on glass like that, it's easy to pry and just pop the edge of the glass too. And if there was Rex devices up here, it's pretty simple to defeat those Rex sensors by slipping a piece of paper through there or blowing some smoke or something. Even people have set up their sensors to read a little bit farther out. I heard a story of a lady blowing up a balloon with hot air. So it was thermal and movement and blew it up in the door and then let it go. And it flew past the sensor, tripped it and was able to get through. Wow. So those Rex sensors, you got to have them angled just right if you want to prevent stuff like this. I would highly recommend getting locking hardware, actual locking hardware. And I know a couple of manufacturers that make some really good exit devices so people could leave in the case of emergency and keep the door very secure. Yeah, there's a lot going on. If we're given a knocking score, Alec, what's your gut telling you? Yeah, for me, the deceitfulness of having that, what seems like the primary flow of traffic to your point where like, if that's where I came in, that's where I'm going out. I don't like the idea that I'm likely to go snap against that door, potentially explode my own coffee, like you said. So I would put this a little higher. I'd put this maybe like in the six, seven range just cause it's, there's going to be more than one person that has some problems with it. Mia, what do you think? I'm torn because they have a working exit, but it's not intuitive. It was the last thing you tried. Yeah. I'm kind of in the seven range. Like if I kind of want to be higher, but since that one door is working as intended. Like you probably would be able to escape if you needed to. Like if you couldn't get through that door, you'd probably try a couple of other doors before. Yeah, there's 300 people pushing you. Maybe you don't make it to the other door. That's concerning. Yeah. This is a tough one. I'm with you. I think there's, I know we say this on the show all the time. There's a lot of unanswered questions. And if there are other clearly marked paths of egress, maybe this could be code compliant. My gut is telling me that there's something wrong with this. I don't know. Maybe we need to have Katie look at it a little bit more. It does more of like a management rule break. Like they've done some sort of adapting and said, we don't like this. So just make people go this way. Or maybe they did have the rec sensors set up in a way so you could have free egress, but then people were figuring out how to get into the building because those are really easy to defeat. So maybe they removed those and they're like, hey, we don't, like they're just locked. They're on a timer. They're on the fire system. Like we should be good, right? But no, not, not always. And I don't know. I guess this is something that I don't know, but are you allowed to, depending on the time of day, change the behavior of an exit door? In certain occupancies you're allowed to, if like mercantile and retail environments, you can if the, because the occupancy changes during those hours. So the occupancy type should change and the path of egress or means of egress should adapt accordingly. So you'll see a lot of signs, at least in the United States, we learned from our last episode that Canada doesn't have any rules like that, which is at least BC, right? But that you have to have a clearly marked sticker on your door saying these doors must remain open during the hours of business. And those would be like the customer's path of egress and you just train your internal employees to use the back entrances. And it should be enough because of the lowering in occupancy total. I would love to argue against that saying, hey, if I have 300 people and you gotta exit one way, but if there's only 10 people, they gotta exit a different way. Like, wouldn't you just get used to what you're in and out is? Like there's almost like a learned behavior that you're gonna get used to. So if you're in and out changes, depending on how many people are there, and let's say you picked up a different shift or you're there at a different time of day, what you thought was the easiest path to get out has suddenly just been the rules changed on you. Like I understand it, but I don't like it. Yeah, no, it could lead to some incidents happening because then also that door is lockable during hours of business. And that's where you find some issues is especially with the height in retail crime happening, people are closing or locking doors or even locking them inside and creating their own like main trap, basically. And that's definitely illegal. Those retail employees should get fired for something like that because you're creating a very hostile environment not only for the person that is trying to escape but if something did happen and we couldn't escape because of that or the customers couldn't escape, that's a whole another level of liability. So kind of crazy. Yep. You said it was gonna be a lighter movement, it's got pretty intense. If you wanna be featured on a future episode of Unhinged or if you have a photo to submit, you can email me at Mia at doorhardwarenerds.com.