mastering levels?

[Evan]

Not sure how much experience you have but I frequently work in brand new buildings, even in the design stage and it is almost unheard of to have mortise locks specified on all doors. Most single story office complexes use a storefront using a mortise cylinder, interiors using cylindrical locks and rear exits usually come simply with a grade 1 lever. Later deadbolts may be added to rear doors or a panic bar may be installed.

Stores around here will generally have delayed egress exit devices on exterior doors, a storefront and cylindrical locks on interiors.

Multistory offices will use mortise locks on doors from the hall to individual spaces quite often but will almost always use cylindrical locks on interior doors. In fact many even use cylindrical on the hall doors.

Sounds like regional differences in design preference... I don't consider retail buildings to be "built for the ages" as they are often simply gutted to the demising walls and rebuilt between tenant occupancies... A true office building that doesn't invest in top quality hardware when designed and built which should be built for the ages as while the tenants may change, it is not a matter of routine for the doors and partitions within office space to be altered with each new tenant...

The use of the store front systems in non-retail buildings around northern parts is generally not seen as our heating season lasts longer than the Floridian cooling season and Low-E glass only keeps extra heat out, it doesn't do much to keep the heat in...

The rear doors having lever sets and deadbolts installed would be a no no around here if the building is more than 150 feet deep as it would be the emergency egress path for the rear portion of the building and must have one-touch release via a panic bar...

Your local code officials seem more trusting of delayed egress devices than the ones around New England as you have to make a special case and have a fully sprinkler protected building in order to even entertain the idea of installing one of those here...

Multistory buildings here generally will have the same type of lock installed on all of the doors at the time of construction in order to obtain occupancy permits as doors must have hardware installed in order for the partition to be up to code, undeveloped space will not be partitioned and is generally left with only sheet rock installed on the walls adjoining occupied space...

~~ Evan

[cledry]

Interesting. The VP of our company is a locksmith from Rhode Island, perhaps you even know each other. I will discuss the differences with him. Especially the mention that multi-story high rise buildings always specify mortise locks for all doors. Here buildings tend to consider the interior walls to be non-permanent. Often a new tenant will knock out interior walls and reconfigure space to suit. It is only the common areas that are considered part of the building and thus generally specified with mortise locks.

The delayed egress requirement here ties to the fire system, so sprinklers or not the doors release instantly if the fire system has been activated. AFAIK they always have sprinklers as well though.

Since we were discussing use of these cylinders in commercial situations I didn't restrict my comments to one particular sort of commercial establishment. I assume strip malls, strip office buildings, shops, stores, warehouses, churches are also to be found in New England. They probably make up a large portion of commercial space.

For example I recently commented on a MK job done for a new church, I rekeyed @600 locks and there were 10 rim cylinders, 31 mortise cylinders and the rest cylindrical levers.

Today I am doing a small MK job in a 5 story commercial space. @50 locks including all interior offices and 3 entrances to the suite. All of them are cylindrical lever.

Another example I could point out is that Medeco and other manufacturers who make cylinders to adapt to other brands do not restrict themselves to mortise or rim cylinders. It would be interesting to know what percentage each variety comprise in the sales of cylinders.

It would be interesting to hear from locksmiths around the USA and the world (if the market will be global) to see what is the norm in their region.

[cledry]

Chatted with our VP and he says in 25 years of locksmithing in Rhode Island he never saw an office building that used mortise locks exclusively. The only places he saw a lot of mortise locks used on almost every door was in universities. The 150 foot deep law for panic bars must be new, he says it used to be based on square footage less furnishings divided by occupancy. He did say mortise locks on homes is more common in New England than here.

I still maintain that to get into the retrofit market there will need to be all three sorts of cylinders in common use.