School Time-Out Room

[Inspector Gadget]

But you caught it. Good catch.

I'm pretty certain I'm the first plan reviewer in my town who ever looks at door hardware. If we get a door schedule at all, it often doesn't include the hardware schedule. Or it lists locks as "lock." Not helpful.

Some in my area do. I am contemplating the same ... for reasons.

 

[Yankee Chronicler]

Interesting article. I did some digging and found this, which will be very helpful to me. I went through the entire hardware spec and identified each lock then went looking for the function. I had to try several wholesale websites before I found one that identified the F codes. Even the MFR websites didn't have them or buried them deep inside somewhere I didn't have the patience to find. Seems like it would be beneficial to everyone to provide the F code in the hardware schedules.

I wonder if any list is complete. That list doesn't include the "time out" lock function, and no other list I've found does, either. But this list also fails to include the "classroom security" lock function, which is what's now fairly standard for schools that don't use centralized, electronic locks. The "Classroom Secuity" function is an industry standard, and should be on any list.

The difference is that the traditional "Classroom" function only has a keyway on the corridor side. The teacher unlocks the door from the corridor side, and it remains unlocked until the teacher goes into the corridor and locks it. This was the standard classroom lock for decades -- until after the Columbine school shooting, when educators and school designers realized that it might not be a great idea for teachers to have to go out into the corridor to lock the classroom door if there's a shooter prowling the school.

So the lock industry came up with the "Classroom Security" lock function. This works just like the traditional "Classroom" function, except that it adds a keyway on the inside (classroom side). This means that teachers can lock the doors to their classrooms from the inside in a lockdown situation, without having to go into the corridor and be potentially exposed to gunfire.

A proper hardware schedule should include the function codes. The problem is that architectural specifiers are split into two camps on how to do this and who should do it. Some (like me, when I was writing specs) prefer to do this themselves. Others only do a bare-bones hardware spec, and leave it up to a hardware consultant working for the contractor or the hardware supplier to prepare a detailed hardware schedule as a shop drawing submittal. When it's done that way, the building department generally never sees it.

It's pretty amazing that Sifu caught this. Kudos!

 

[Sifu]

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then, but like I said, it took two readings of the specs. It is what I call a double dip. I didn't make the comment on the first round, and I don't like coming up with new comments on round two that should have been caught. But I do if I need to. It reminds me to be more thorough, and specifically how important the hardware can be. I always look harder at schools, but apparently not hard enough in this case. We have debated before about requiring the hardware on the plans. In this case they did not so I asked them to. On the resubmittal they still did not. Not a hill I die on, just makes it easier for the inspector if they care to look. I suspect they don't. Because of that, more and more, I feel the best shot at code compliance comes from plan review. So I look a lot harder. This time-out situation kind of woke me up a little. If I hadn't caught this, it is almost a certainty nobody else would have in the field, and it could have gone unchecked.

 

[Sifu]

Update: I contacted our resident door hardware guru @ idighardware and was educated about the specific lockset in question. Though I read the following I didn't realize that the function of the lock is such that the outside button must be physically held by the user for the inside to remain locked. So if the person on the outside walks away the inside is automatically released. So, though this was a great education for me, I think it may have been much ado about nothing. Either way, they didn't go with it as a program choice. I have not yet found a function code for this type of lock.

 

[SCBO1]

We had a science teacher that would have liked to lock us all up.

That science teacher had really, really bad breath, but we suggested he should have an experiMENT to make things better!

 

[Yankee Chronicler]

Update: I contacted our resident door hardware guru @ idighardware and was educated about the specific lockset in question. Though I read the following I didn't realize that the function of the lock is such that the outside button must be physically held by the user for the inside to remain locked. So if the person on the outside walks away the inside is automatically released. So, though this was a great education for me, I think it may have been much ado about nothing. Either way, they didn't go with it as a program choice. I have not yet found a function code for this type of lock.

View attachment 13111

Thanks for the update. That makes more sense, from a code perspective. Functionally, how does it work? A teacher can't stand there and hold the button for a half hour or an hour straight. Is another student delegated to hold the button?

Weird!

And interesting that there's no BHMA function code assigned to the function. The BHMA codes are an ANSI standard -- I wonder if that's a new function that has been submitted for ANSI approval but has not yet been accepted.

 

[Inspector Gadget]

We had a science teacher that would have liked to lock us all up.

That science teacher had really, really bad breath, but we suggested he should have an experiMENT to make things better!

The chemistry teacher for high school was an interesting nut... And not one that was well-loved. I didn't mind the guy, but apparently I was responsible for causing him some degree of mental anguish.

Couldn't have been something to do with walking up to him one Chem 12 class and idly declaring that with the various experiments going on in the class, and the various chemicals on hand, he'd unwittingly given a bunch of kids sufficient precursors to make nitroglycerin.