I don't know what Klaus has in the way of 'door magnets'. They sound as if they are hard wired to their fire alarm system. I have fitted a number of these in Priory Rooms / Bull Street MH. and elsewhere. https://www.screwfix.com/p/dorgard-ll800-hold-open-fire-door-retainer-black/... Essentially you secure them open manually.. If there is a 'noise' for a prolonged period (fire alarm) they automatically release so no wiring or direct connection is needed. Sensitivity can be adjusted (so when you are drilling or vacuuming nearby they don't release). Also you can set a 'release' time) so they auto close at night. A touch with a foot also releases them. (and they beep when needing new batteries) Seemed to me to be so obviously brilliant and simple once set up. Perhaps this could be an answer? William Waddilove - Bull Street MH premises. Hartshill MH Premises, Coventry MH Premises , HLD Maintenance Services . On Thu, 19 Jan 2023 at 16:11, Quaker House via wardenship < wardenship@lists.quaker.eu.org> wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Quaker House <house.quaker@googlemail.com> To: Klaus Huber <boawarden@gmail.com> Cc: Wardenship-Egroup <wardenship@lists.quaker.eu.org> Bcc: Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2023 15:24:52 +0000 Subject: [wardenship] Re: Fire door magnets Dear Klaus,
This is priceless and made me laugh thank you.
At the Meeting House in Plymouth we have door magnets on our fire doors as they tend to be left open before our hirers start their meeting (mainly in the ground floor meeting room as it is opposite the front door so that they can see late comers). We also have the magnets on our kitchen door.
Brutal use of the magnets has been an issue, but more so the noise of the batteries when they run down can be a quiet beep that gradually amplifies in sound over time....and it isn't always clear at first where this beep, beep BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. I have yet to solve the issue with the door kickers, scrapers or the beep.
Thanks again, Klaus I am still laughing....
Kind regards,
*Esther White* *Quaker House Coordinator*
01752 600760 house.quaker@googlemail.com www.quakerhouseplymouth.org.uk Quaker House, 74 Mutley Plain, Plymouth, Devon, PL4 6LF
On Thu, 19 Jan 2023 at 09:54, Klaus Huber <boawarden@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Friends,
Like many Meeting Houses, Bradford on Avon has a fire alarm system, and we have several doors that act as fire doors and therefore should be shut. However, it's often convenient to have them open, so we opted for holding them open with the help of door magnets that are connected to the fire alarm. If the fire alarm goes off, the magnets get released and the doors shut. In principle a clever system. However, our fire door magnets have one major design fault: to close them, you need to press a switch button. This is obviously too sophisticated for most people, so the majority of people are closing the doors with brute force. As a result, the door magnets keep breaking. About a year ago, I replaced the third of three door magnet keeper plates (and wrote the article pasted below that went into our Local Meeting newsletter), now the magnet unit itself of the same door has been ripped out. Does anyobody else use fire door magnets? And if so, have you come across anything that is unkaputtbar, as we would say in German (or anything that never gets kaput, as it would be in English)?
Many thanks, Klaus Huber Resident Warden, Bradford on Avon
PS. For your amusement, here's the article that was published in the January 2022 edition of the Bradford on Avon Quaker Meeeting newsletter. Just days later, I observed a Friend yet again closing the same door with brute force.
*The Secret Life and Death of a*
*fire alarm door magnet keeper plate*
The door magnets are probably the least understood feature in our building. They owe their existence largely to a combination of laziness and forgetfulness. They're an easy and convenient way of propping open a fire door, i.e. one of those internal doors that are supposed to be closed in the event of fire. You don't have to remember where you put the door wedges, you don't have to take a fire extinguisher off its holder to prop open the door, and what's best: you don't have to remember to close the door when you leave the building. So if you happen to read the sign saying "Fire door - keep shut", you can do what most people do with most signs: ignore it.
I still vividly remember, when I bought vegetables from the field at Avonleigh for the first time, I walked straight past a gigantic sign saying in enormous letters "Please wait here", and didn't actually notice the sign's very existence until I was ushered back behind it. But I digress.
Back to the doors held open by the door magnets. Yes, you can ignore the sign, because if the fire alarm goes off, the electromagnetic thingy will have its electricity cut off, as a result of which there won't be anything magnetic anymore, so the door magnet keeper plate (the humble part that sticks on the door) won't have anything to hold on to anymore, and, hey presto, as if by magic, the door will close. Clever, innit?
So far, so good. However, sometimes you do want to close that door. So how do you do it? If you paid attention, you will already picked up on one option: setting off the fire alarm. However, this is not always very practical, and would not be much appreciated by the residents upstairs. So what other ways are there? Brute force seems to be a popular choice among Friends. No wonder that two of three door magnet keeper plates were broken when I arrived as a Warden 9 years ago. The kitchen door magnet keeper plate was the only one still intact. In my naivety, I considered it to be impossible for anyone other than Hercules himself to close the kitchen door with brute force. How wrong I was! Over the years, I observed the accomplishment of this task three times with my own eyes. Each time it was a different Friend in her 70s performing this extraordinary feat of physical prowess. And so it came to pass that, before the year 2021 came to an end, this last surviving door magnet keeper plate had to bite the dust. After too many occasions being torn between a powerful magnet and a more powerful Quakerly arm muscle, it did what everyone would have done in its place: it broke into two.
Now there happens to be a third way of closing a door held on a door magnet. If you paid attention, you would have noticed that it's something to do with electricity being switched off to close the door. How do you switch the electricity to the door magnet off (other than by setting off the fire alarm)? - Yes, exactly: with a switch! The doors to the library and the main meeting room have switches in the corridor, roughly at the same height as the door handles. The kitchen door magnet, located on the floor, has a little black push button acting as switch. Just press it down, and you can close the kitchen door non-violently - and keep the (new) poor fire alarm door magnet keeper plate happy.
-- Klaus Huber Warden Bradford on Avon Quaker Meeting House 1 Whiteheads Lane, Bradford on Avon BA15 1JU Tel. 01225 865393 bradfordonavonquakers.weebly.com
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---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Quaker House via wardenship <wardenship@lists.quaker.eu.org> To: Klaus Huber <boawarden@gmail.com> Cc: Wardenship-Egroup <wardenship@lists.quaker.eu.org>, Quaker House < house.quaker@googlemail.com> Bcc: Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2023 15:24:52 +0000 Subject: [wardenship] Re: Fire door magnets _______________________________________________ wardenship mailing list -- wardenship@lists.quaker.eu.org To unsubscribe send an email to wardenship-leave@lists.quaker.eu.org