If you are a fire marshall, building inspector, or hold a similar
position, please skip this post. I received an email from the
office manager explaining that she and several others had gotten trapped
in the bathroom hallway ealier in the day and asking me if I could do
anything about it.
Background: The company I work for shares the bottom floor
of a building with another tenant. The bathrooms are in a T shaped
hallway between the two suites. An interesting property of this
hallway, is that when you enter the hallway, you get locked into the
hallway and need either a keycode (to get into the other suite) or a
security card (to get into our suite). There is an
emergency release (looks like a fire alarm, only it's
yellow) next to the door into our suite.
Now you might be wondering why, what sounds like a facilities problem
was being brought to the attention of IT. She assumed that there was
something wrong with the card reader and thus we needed to fix it since
we manage the security system. This was my first chance to seriously
poke about at the computer running the alarm and keycard system.
Unfortunately I found nothing wrong. So off to investigate the door I
went.
It took me about five minutes to work out the problem. The card
reader was indeed reading each and every swipe of a card, and you could
always hear a noise from the lock mechanism. What was odd however was
that the lock mechanism made two different noises. One when the lock
actually opened properly, and another when it didn't. It was pretty
clear that that the solenoid that released
the lock and allowed the door to open was not working correctly;
probably sticking at times.
It was as I stood there experimenting with the door that the office
manager came and explained how the emergency release was supposed to
work. After activating the emergency release a few times, it became
quiet clear however that this release sends the same electrical signal
to the lock as the card reader, and thus if the problem is with the lock
itself, the emergency release won't actually let you out of the hallway.
