Wood Doors

An old Portland Church Building with doors in a fire-wall. For reasons we won’t go into, the occupants wanted to be able to prop the doors open.

But to continue to do this, the Fire Marshal was now requiring employing the use of door-hold-open-devices that are tied into the smoke detection system.

The economical way to do this sometimes, if the ceilings are low enough is to use a device that is BOTH, a hold-open device, as well as a smoke detector.

One of the problems that had to be overcome though, was the fact this opening was a bit narrow for a commercial opening.

The way in which this became a problem was that the smoke-detection door-hold-open devices that can be seen in this photo weren’t much narrower than the doors,…

…which created a conflict with where the vertical-rod panic device “strike-plates” needed to be placed. Many such applications would easily overcome this hurdle with hardwired electromagnetic door hold-open devices mounted to adjoining walls…

…that are tied into the smoke-detectors, such as you see in hospitals and such. But as with many churches, that option just wasn’t in the budget.

So anyway, for obvious reasons, we couldn’t drill into the smoke-detector door-hold-open devices to mount the strike-plates, so we had to come up with a custom bracketing system to hold the strike-plates for the vertical rod latches.

And this is what we came up with. A combination Steel and Aluminum Angle conglomeration-bracket that held the strike-plates in proper position without damaging or interfering with the smoke-detector-door-hold-open devices.

The new hydraulic door closers (not shown) were installed on the pull-side of the doors to avoid further conflict with the already crowded area at the top of the push-side of the doors.