The newly opened rest stop on Interstate 95 in Delaware includes an unusual combination of door hardware on the entry and interior vestibule. All the exterior doors are furnished with concealed vertical rod exit devices. Only one leaf of six includes exterior trim to retract the vertical bolts. However the night latch thumb turn has no cylinder installed. The removable core is missing. All the exit devices had cylinder dogging to allow the doors to operate as push pull when the building is occupied - in this case 24 hours per day and 365 days per year. Yet none of the exit devices had a cylinder installed.
The interior vestibule doors show concealed vertical rod exit devices on the accessible entry with a low energy operator controlled by a jamb mounted push pad. The other doors in the vestibule are all push-pull operation with dummy exit bars. There was no apparent need for the vertical rod devices on the accessible door. And the fact the devices existed complicates the automatic door operation.
With vertical rods and low energy operators on the same door, additional electrical coordination is required. Sequencing is required. When the push pad is activated, the exit device latchbolts must fully retract before the operated is engaged to open the door.
Carefully consider the use of exit devices for applications where push pull is the required function. The devices are expensive and must be dogged down manually or electrically to provide push pull operation. And dogging defeats the latching and locking capabilities of the devices.
David Stutzman
