Just a few points to think about as you consider the addition of automatic door operators to your building. You can listen to the podcast episode above or read the audio transcript below.
Welcome to the Fidelity Building Protection podcast on all things related to physical building security with Benjamin Johnson, Ben Harris, 14 years of experience in the security industry and has been the owner of Delta Building Protection, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, since 2014. All statements made on this podcast are explicitly the opinions of Ben based on his experience and perception of current events. No statement should be construed as legal advice. Additionally, because codes vary by state and municipality use, consult a legal expert in your area before applying anything from this podcast.
You can find us online at criminalshateus.com. That’s Criminals Hate US Dotcom or by searching the hashtag Criminals Hate US on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Good morning, everybody. I want to talk to you real quick about automatic doors so some people call them handicap doors or ADA doors, but they are the doors that you walk up to and you push a button. Typically, it’s the blue square that has the wheelchair logo on it and the door opens automatically. And so I think there is going to become more popular now as people start to go back to their offices, although we probably are going to move away from having to use the push button and maybe move towards love. The wall switches that detects waves where you basically put your hands on that wave. You don’t touch it, but it detects that you put your hand in front of it and it opens the door that way.
I think we’re going to start moving towards that for a lot of doors just because people realize that if everybody’s touching the same door handle, it’s a good way to transmit the virus or sickness through the office or through any business. And we certainly don’t want to do that. So I would encourage you, as you start thinking about that, to keep some things in mind. One is to make sure that you work with a security integrator that knows how to integrate with an automatic operator and they work with an automatic operator company that knows how to integrate with the security integrator. The reason for that is if you have a door that has a card reader and a lock on it and you walk up and you push that button or you wave in front of that switch and the door is locked the door. So don’t try and open if it’s not integrated correctly. And in trying to open that skin, obviously put a stress on that motor. Well, if you do that enough times, you’ll burn that motor up.
The flip side, of course, as you can’t have it set up so that if somebody comes up from the outside and pushes the button, the door unlocks without a car read and lets them in because not defeated the point of the access control system. So you need to make sure that when that gets installed that it works in this way if you have access control on the door, and that is that if you push the interior button to leave because we know people are always lively, if you push the interior button that unlocks the door and then fires the motor to open the door, and it needs to have a little bit of time delay in there. So the doors time to lock and everything, but it needs to work that way. And on the flip side, if you’re coming in from the outside into the secure space, you need to make sure that the extra button doesn’t work unless the door is unlocked and the door could be unlocked by a schedule or by a Qaderi or a biometric entry or whatever. But that extra button needs to be disabled until that door is unlocked. It’s really a pretty simple thing to do. We do it all the time.
In fact, we’re an integrator that can install your automatic door operators as well. And so we’re a little bit unique in that way. We don’t do a lot of automatic door operators. Typically, we come in with other companies that are door hardware companies and we work with them on their automatic door operator installs, but we can do them ourselves as well. But just again, make sure that, you know, if you’re going to invest that much money into an automatic door operator, you may be talking twenty five hundred three thousand dollars for a good grade, one automatic door operator on an exterior door. You know, if we can invest that much money in that thing, make sure that it’s getting installed correctly so that six months down the line, you don’t have a burn, a motor or a year down the line. Do you have a permanent motor when you’re out of the warranty? Right. And this way, you’re going to get the most use of your investment there. And that’s the other thing to make sure that they’re putting an operator on the door that’s rated for use, it needs to be just like anything else in this world.
There are different levels of operators, there’s different levels of door hardware, and there are door operators and daughter that are made to be our next career high use doors. And there is hardware that’s meant to go on a storage closet or something that’s only opened every once in a while. Right. So make sure that you’re not just looking at the lowest price there, because typically that’s how some of your unsavory, I guess, or less reputable companies are going to try to undercut their competition by selling a lower grade of hardware. So make sure that as you’re looking at these estimates, as you’re looking at somebody to sort of back door operator on your building that they are putting in the right equipment. If you have questions, you can always call us. You can call the security integrator, call a second door hardware company, you know, call somebody else and give that second opinion if you need to. But just make sure that if you’re going to invest that much money that you’re getting, your money’s worth out of it and not getting a bigger headache. That’s all we got. Today, it’s Monday, it’s start to hopefully a great week, so enjoy the rest of your weekend, wasn’t it?
Hey, guys, wanted to take a quick minute here to give a shout out to anchor Don AFAM anchor is the portal that I use to record these podcast. So I am pretty well versed in the security industry. At least I like to think that I am. But I’m not necessarily technically savvy when it comes to some of these things, like podcasts or social media postings like that, and made it really easy to record. It’s a free service as a user pushes it out to some great platforms like Spotify, like Apple, and it’s made this task of trying to create a new podcast really pretty easy for me. And they make their money through paid ads like this. And so I’d encourage you if you’ve thought about starting your own podcast, go to Anchorite Farm, check them out and see if maybe it’ll help you create yours as well. Thanks for taking time out of your day to listen to our podcast.
