You have to look at all the evidence and come to a conclusion. So in my opinion, electric strikes should not be used on stair doors, but the fail safe / fail secure question is not specifically addressed in the code language. And a fail secure electric strike will not provide for stairwell reentry. If a door is fire-rated, an electric strike has to be fail secure to provide positive latching. I have had several people tell me that the pressure in the stairwell will keep the door latched, but I have never seen a basis for that belief in the codes. The pressure from a fire can push the latchbolt right through the keeper and the open door will allow smoke, heat, and gases to compromise the stairwell. With a fail safe electric strike, cutting the power means that the spring-loaded keeper is the only thing holding the door closed, and that is not enough to be considered positively latched. According to current codes, most stair doors have to allow reentry back into the building during a fire, therefore, a fail safe product must be used. The question has come up several times in relation to electric strikes on stair doors. You need to put all of the pieces together to provide something more than “because I said so.” In my opinion, the issue of electric strikes on fire doors is NOT a grey area, but in researching the requirement for someone who needed some evidence, I discovered that the codes are not very specific about it. My interpretation isn’t official, but at least it’s something to refer to and discuss. I hate to respond to a question by saying, “Well, that’s a grey area…” In those cases I like to dig around until I can provide a solid interpretation with proof to go along with it. The AHJ can sometimes be a bit of a wild card, but they are usually open to having a discussion and most of the time we end up on the same page. They’re not always black and white but we can work toward an understanding of the intent even if the language isn’t perfect. When someone asks me a code question I can usually go right to the applicable code book and translate what is written there, and there’s always the commentary or handbook to give a little extra insight. I think that has a lot to do with my interest in the codes. I like math…you get an answer and it’s right or wrong. Right around graduation, I decided that I couldn’t become an architect because the process was way too subjective for me. Someone recently asked me why, after going to architectural school, I decided to become a hardware consultant instead of an architect. This post was published in Doors & Hardware
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