About the business
I manage a small clinic with a front door, a medicine room and a rear fire exit.
The problem
After the new access system went in, we switched off power to each door, one at a time, as a test.
The medicine room door unlocked itself.
It had been wired fail-safe, which unlocks in a power cut. We needed it to stay locked. Mixing up fail-safe and fail-secure wiring is a common installation error, and we'd never have known without testing.
What we did
We added one column to our door list: what the door does when the power fails. We filled it in for every door.
The medicine room became fail-secure.
The rear exit was a different matter. Exit routes have to open without a key, and access-controlled exit doors often have to release when the fire alarm goes off. The rules vary by location and building, so we asked our local fire authority to confirm, rather than guess.
The result
Every door now has a written power-failure rule, a test result in our handover file, and a fire authority sign-off on the exit.
A power cut isn't a surprise anymore.
This was one of five mistakes another company made on its install.
Not sure what your doors do when the power goes? Tell us what's behind each one. We'll help you write the rule per door and plan the test.
Free door-by-door access review
Send us your door list, or just tell us what's behind each door. We'll reply with the weak spots and what to fix first, cheapest first.
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- Reply within 24 hours
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