First principle
This is life safety equipment
Everything else about the door is negotiable. This is not.
One motion, no thought, no knowledge
A panic bar exists so that a person who is frightened, in the dark, in smoke, possibly being pushed from behind, can get out by falling against the door. No turning, no key, no instruction. If a device requires anything more than that from the inside, it has stopped doing its job regardless of how well it is working mechanically.
It is inspected, and it should be
Exit hardware on a commercial building is subject to requirements about how it operates. That is not bureaucracy for its own sake, it comes from a long history of doors that were locked when they should not have been. We work within it rather than around it, and where a request would compromise an exit we say so plainly.
Security lives on the outside
Everything you want to do about who gets in belongs on the outside of that door. Trim with a cylinder, an electric strike, a card reader, an alarm on the bar itself. The inside stays free. That division is the whole design and it is what makes the door both secure and safe at once.
Chains and padlocks are never the answer
A chained exit is the single most dangerous thing that happens to commercial doors, and it is almost always done by someone solving a real problem, usually theft or people propping the door open. There are proper answers to both. None of them involve a chain.
The devices
What is on the door, and what it does
Rim exit device
The most common. A bar across the door with the latch mounted on the surface, catching a strike on the frame. Straightforward, robust, easy to service.
Mortise exit device
The lock body sits inside the door edge rather than on the surface. Cleaner, usually on heavier or higher-traffic doors, more involved to work on.
Vertical rod device
Rods run up and down inside or on the face of the door, latching top and bottom. Common on double doors where there is no centre post to latch into.
Outside trim
The handle or lever on the street side, often with a cylinder. This is where entry is controlled, and where rekeying happens.
Electric strike
Lets the door be released electrically without touching the exit side at all. The usual pairing with an entry system.
Door alarm
Sounds when the bar is pushed. The correct answer to a fire door being used as a staff shortcut, instead of chaining it.
What goes wrong
The failures we are called to, roughly in order
The latch no longer catches
The commonest fault and usually the least dramatic cause. The door has settled, or the strike has worn, and the latch is arriving somewhere slightly other than where it needs to be. The bar works perfectly. The door simply does not stay shut. People often respond by pushing harder, which accelerates the wear.
The vertical rods have gone out of adjustment
On a double door with top and bottom rods, one end will usually let go first. The symptom is a door that feels secure but can be pulled open at one corner. It is adjustable, it does not need new hardware, and it is worth checking on any double exit door that has been in service a few years.
The bar has become stiff
A device that needs a hard shove has failed at its actual purpose even though it still opens. Grit, dried lubricant, a bent dog or a rod under tension. Whatever the cause, a stiff panic bar is a fault and not a quirk.
The outside trim is loose or seized
Because the outside is the part exposed to weather and strangers. A seized cylinder in exit trim strands staff outside a door that opens perfectly from within, which is a nuisance rather than a danger but a very common call.
Somebody has defeated it
Tape over the latch, a wedge under the door, a bar dogged down permanently so it never locks. Every one of these starts as a practical solution to a real problem and ends as an unlocked building. The fix is to solve the underlying problem rather than to remove the workaround and walk away.
Before we visit
Useful to know on the phone
- Whether it is a single door or a pair. Double doors with vertical rods are a different job.
- Whether the bar is on the surface of the door or set into the edge.
- Whether there is a handle or lever on the outside, and whether it has a keyhole.
- Whether the door is currently latching, currently opening from inside, or neither.
- Whether the building is inspected and by whom, if you know. It affects what can be fitted.
- Whether the door is being propped or held open regularly, and why. That reason usually needs solving too.
- Whether anything is currently taped, wedged or tied on the door. Say so. It is common and it tells us what problem you have really been living with.
Doing it right
How we approach an exit door
The order matters here more than on any other opening.
The exit side is tested first
Before anything else, the door gets opened from the inside the way a person would in an emergency. One push, no hands on anything else. If that does not work, nothing else about the door matters yet.
Then the latching
Whether it catches on its own every time, without being pulled or lifted. A door that latches only when someone helps it is a door that spends part of the day unlocked.
Then the outside
Trim, cylinder, and whatever controls entry. This is the part where security decisions get made, and they get made after the safety side is confirmed working.
Then the honest conversation
If the building is using a fire door as a delivery entrance, or staff are propping it because the alternative is a long walk, we would rather solve that properly than fit something that gets defeated within a week. Hardware that people work around is worse than hardware that is not there, because it creates a false record of a door being secure.
Questions
Frequently asked
Can I lock a fire exit at night when nobody is in the building?
From the outside, yes, and that is normal. From the inside, no. The exit has to release whenever a person is behind it, and buildings are rarely as empty as people assume.
Staff keep propping the exit open. What can I do about it?
Fit an alarm on the device. It sounds when the door is used, which ends casual propping without ever restricting the exit. It is the correct answer and it takes an hour.
The bar works but the door will not stay shut.
Usually the strike or the door position rather than the device. Adjustable in most cases. It does not normally mean new hardware.
Can you rekey the outside of an exit door?
Yes. The cylinder in the outside trim rekeys like any other, and on a business with staff turnover it should be on the same schedule as your other doors.
One of our double doors can be pulled open at the top.
That is a vertical rod out of adjustment, and it is one of the more common faults we see on pairs. It is a repair, not a replacement.
Do we need panic hardware at all?
That depends on the building, its use and its occupancy, and it is not something to guess at. If you are unsure, it is worth asking your inspector before spending money either way.
Choosing hardware
What actually matters when a device has to be replaced
Grade is not marketing here
Exit devices carry grades, and unlike a lot of hardware grading the difference is real and physical. A device on a door that opens four hundred times a day is a wear item, and the cheapest one on the shelf will be back on our list within a couple of years. On a low-traffic rear exit that same device may last a decade. Matching the grade to the traffic is most of the decision.
Match the door, not the catalogue
Hollow metal, aluminium and glass, timber, and each in single or pairs. A device that is right for one is wrong for another, and vertical rod hardware in particular is fussy about the door it goes on. Measuring properly before ordering is what stops a second visit.
Handing and stile width
Which way the door swings and how much rail there is to work with. On narrow stile aluminium doors the options shrink considerably, and that is worth knowing before anyone promises a particular device.
The outside is a separate decision
Trim comes in a range from a plain pull with no entry at all, through lever trim with a cylinder, to electrified trim controlled by a card reader. That decision is about how people get in, and it can be changed later without touching the exit side.
Finish is the last thing
It matters for how the place looks and not at all for how the door works. Decide it after the rest, not before.
Cost and honesty
What drives the price, said plainly
No figures here, but the factors are not a mystery.
Repair is usually the answer
A device that has been in service for years and has developed a fault is far more often adjustable, cleanable or repairable than it is finished. Latches, strikes, rods and dogging mechanisms are all serviceable. Anyone whose first answer on an exit door is replacement is skipping several steps.
Replacement is the answer when
The device is obsolete and parts cannot be sourced, the door has changed, the traffic has outgrown the hardware, or the existing device is a grade that was never right for the opening. Those are real reasons and we will say which one applies.
Double doors cost more than twice
Because the two leaves have to work together, and vertical rods on a pair need setting up as a system rather than as two independent doors. Budget accordingly if you have a pair.
Ask what happens if it fails again
A device fitted correctly to the right door should not need revisiting soon. If it does, that is a conversation worth having before the work rather than after.
The thing nobody asks about
Dogging, and why it matters more than it sounds
What dogging is
Most exit devices can be held in the retracted position deliberately, so the door pushes open freely without the latch engaging. That is dogging, and during trading hours on a shop or an office lobby it is completely normal and correct.
Where it goes wrong
A door that is dogged and never undogged is a door that is never locked. It happens constantly. The last person out assumes the door locks itself, and it does not, because it was dogged at nine in the morning and nobody undid it. Buildings have been left open all weekend this way.
Mechanical versus electric
A mechanically dogged device stays dogged until someone physically undoes it, which is where the problem lives. An electrically dogged device can be tied to a schedule or an alarm system so the door secures itself at a set time regardless of who remembers. For any building where more than one person locks up, that is the upgrade worth making.
Fire doors are different
A door rated for fire is generally not permitted to be dogged at all, because it has to latch to do its job. If a fire rated door in your building has a device that can be held open, that is worth checking rather than assuming it was set up correctly.
On arrival
What we check, in this order
The push, first
Somebody stands inside and pushes the bar the way a person leaving in a hurry would. One motion, one hand, no lifting or turning. If that is not clean, nothing else gets touched until it is.
Then the latch, ten times
Not once. A latch that catches nine times out of ten is a door that is unlocked several times a week, and a single test will not find it. The door gets closed repeatedly from different angles and different speeds, because that is how it actually gets closed.
Then the rods, on a pair
Top and bottom, both leaves, checking that each latches independently and that the inactive leaf cannot be pulled at a corner. This is where most double door faults hide.
Then the closer
Whether the door reaches the frame with enough energy to latch under its own power. A closer set gently enough to be polite is often set too gently to lock the building.
Then the outside
Trim, cylinder, and whether the key list for it is accounted for. A rear exit is very often the door with the oldest key history in the building.
Then dogging
Whether the device is dogged, whether anyone knew, and whether it is being undogged at night. This one question has found unlocked buildings more often than any other check we do.
Delaware specifics
What we see locally
Building stock and weather both leave marks on exit hardware.
Older retail cores
Wilmington and older Newark have exit devices that have been in continuous service for a very long time. Many are repairable and some are obsolete. Establishing which, early, changes the whole conversation and avoids ordering parts that do not exist.
Warehousing and light industrial
The corridor along the interstate has a lot of units where a rear exit is also the door staff use for breaks, deliveries and everything else. Those doors take far more traffic than their hardware was specified for, and they are the ones most likely to be propped.
Newer south county units
Around Dover and Middletown the stock is newer and more standardised. Parts availability is rarely the issue. Setup and adjustment usually are, because a device that was fitted quickly at handover often was never tuned.
Winter and summer both
Salt on a threshold attacks latches and strikes from below, and summer humidity swells doors enough to change where the latch lands. An exit door that latched perfectly in spring and drags in August has not broken, and it does not need replacing.
Coverage
Where we work
Commercial and retail premises across both counties.
Exit door not right?
Tell us what it does from the inside first. That is the answer that matters most.
Alignment between the device, the latch and the strike
An exit device may look simple, but it depends on tight alignment between its parts. The push bar moves a latch, the latch engages a strike on the frame, and any mismatch between them causes sticking, rattling, or a door that refuses to latch at all. On a busy door, a small misalignment grows into a real problem quickly. When we look at an exit device, we check that the latch enters the strike cleanly, that the door sits square, and that nothing rubs when the bar is pressed.
Doors move over time. Hinges loosen, frames shift with the seasons, and the weight of a door in a humid Delaware summer can differ from its weight in dry winter air. A strike that lined up perfectly at installation may now sit a few millimeters off. Adjusting the strike, shimming a hinge, or correcting the door position often restores smooth operation without replacing the device. We prefer to fix the cause rather than force a new device into a door that is already out of true.
A useful test is simple: press the bar slowly and watch the latch retract, then let go and watch it return and enter the strike. Listen for scraping. If the door needs a push or a pull to latch, mention it. Also tell us if the door is a required exit route, because that affects what can be done and how it must be left. Call us to describe the door and to confirm availability. The scope and any quote are explained before work begins.