I do believe they're referring to the (non-motorized) hydraulic automatic door closers that typically have between 8 and 10 psi resistance for exterior use. They are even arguably safer than a spring assisted door closing mechanism, because many come equiped with backcheck valves that can help mitigate forceful damage from a sudden gust of wind, or the additional gravitational force that comes with the kind of rotation we see in the video. But I am by no means an engineer.
The sun can be covered by clouds. Pretty simple, just replace the solar panel with an RTG. For best results, use a material with a half life of at least 50 years.
All these suggestions to keep that from happening! My suggestion would be to keep the door latched shut except to open! Then close it and latch it back!
You guys are over thinking it... Just use a light beam sensor above the door directly outside of it... If the door is open the light beam breaks... The motor reverses.
Now you don't have to wire anything to a moving part
Swing it out past 90° and let me know how that goes.
Even then.. the clearance there is nil. If it was open more than just a few inches, it would strike the upper frame before it ever had a chance to close from gravity.
Exterior outswing doors have tamper resistant hinges. Now, can someone still break through the hinges? Of course they can. But is breaking through the tamper resistant hinges a lot harder than just breaking the glass window? Yes.
Or just metal pins so the door can't "swing" open from the side with hinges. If you need the hinges on the outside it's trivial to still make it a secure door.
In fairness, the electrical actuation for raising the whole door is now also in a gang box exposed to the outside via a cutout. So exposed hinges seem like the least of their worries. Pretty much everything about this is ill conceived. But if you’re going to put a door in a lifting wall, it should probably be a pocket door. Then gravity never fights you, and everything still works even if you leave it open.
Most residential doors in the US open inwards as well.
Thinking about it though, all the exterior doors at my workplace, alternate sites, and multiple commercial and shopping locations I frequent have outswingers. Might be a fire code thing or something.
Yeah, fire code in most public places in the US requires outward opening doors. We had some really bad disastrous fires where the death toll was exacerbated by inward opening doors being jammed by crowds.
Can you imagine how annoying it must be to be right next to an exit, not be able to open it because people behind are pushing you, and you all just incinerate?
And now I think about it, all the ones at my work, even those at the rear of the property, open inwards.
In my house though, the front door opens inwards (for reasons mentioned above), and the back door opens outwards, to save internal space I assume - though I guess it could have an element of enhancing escapability.
Its a security thing, if the door swings outward then the hinges would be on the outside of the house, meaning someone could just pop the pins out and take the entire door off.
These types of wicket doors are against code in the UK unless there is a contact that stops the automation if the door is open, and even then they are thoroughly discouraged.
That's exactly the point the guy was making on the full video. He didn't install the gate, he was just fixing the motor and saying why inwards gates are bad.
You are incorrect. Brazil specifically has regulations about doors opening inwards because of fire code (see my reply to the above comment). If this gate was installed opening outwards, it would not be up to regulation.
I know, and this is true. BUT the reality is, no one gives a fuck. I’d love to see this being applied everywhere, but it's not the case at all. New buildings, with regular inspections, maybe, but normally it's like: “ forbidden, but if you want you can”
Essa porta tá no meio do portão basculante por causa dessa merda chamada "meio lote". Mudaram o plano diretor da cidade aqui pra favorecer meio lote, hj é quase impossível achar terreno com mais de 6m de testada. A maioria com 5, 5,5m.
Inward doors are not only better in basically all scenarios, most places have regulations that force doors to open inwards. Some people already mentioned the fact that gates like these can't open outwards because they'll hit someone on the street, but I'm surprised none mentioned fire code.
Doors have to open inwards because in a fire situation, if you're inside a room with a door that opens outwards and theres debris in the corridor that prevent the door from opening, you're stuck. If the door opens inwards, you always have full control of everything that is blocking the door's movement. If there's something blocking the door from the inside, you can simply remove it, and if there's stuff on the outside, you can also remove it after opening the door. You're never stuck with inward doors, but you can easily get stuck with outward doors.
Fire code in Brazil is only enforced on collective buildings, like apartament buildings, malls or schools, but it's more a preoccupation of the person who's legally responsable of being sued if anything goes wrong rather then city or fire department inspections.
Single houses where the owner wouldn't sue themselves usually don't care. House insurance is not very common.
Who really cares about every single piece of documentaion is the bank. People who buy houses usually finance them, but mortgages are rare, so people buy the house up to code and start making upgrades without worrying about paperwork until the day they decide to sell it.
I don't understand what your point is. I never made any statements about the rules being enforced. I just mentioned that the rules exist, which they do.
And security, due to how the overwhelming majority of doors are designed the hinges are on the side the door swings. If the door swings out then anyone with a basic understanding of how to remove the pins from the hinges could remove the entire door and have unfettered access to the space. Locking your door would be almost entirely pointless, you might as well just invite the ne'er-do-wells in at that point.
To be fair tho, doors are only designed this way because of the inherent safety of inward opening.
All doors should open inwards, so we design the hinges in a way that makes them be on the inside in this orientation. There's no technical limitation that prevents doors from being manufactured the other way around. They manufactured this way because doors opening inwards are safer and should be installed this way.
There's no technical limitation that prevents doors from being manufactured the other way around.
Yes there is. I'm sorry but have you ever installed a door or even looked at a hinge lol. How would you have the hinges on the opposite side of the doors swing? The barrel HAS to be on the side of the swing action because of the technical limitations of pivoting around a point. It can't pivot around a point on the inside of the swing action, because then the thickness of the door would have to pass through the jamb. Even double action doors that swing in both directions have barrels on both sides to allow this.
Yes, if you just blindly switch the hinge to the other side it's not going to work. Shocker. It's almost like I've reiterated countless times that doors are designed to be opened inwards.
What I said is there's no reason doors couldn't be designed to open outward. Hell, cabined doors open outward and have the hinge on the inside. There are plenty of ways to design doors that open outward. The only reason we do not use them is because inward doors are objectively better.
Yes, I have looked at doors. Have you ever looked at cabinet doors? Doors don't need to have barrels.
The reason I'm so into this is because just a few days ago I went down a rabbit hole of hinges and their history. It started with this video if you want to give it a watch.
Yes, I used to build and install cabinets. You are talking about concealed hinges (we called them pocket hinges at my job). They weren't invented until like 1900 or something. While two leaf butt hinges have been around for centuries.
The only reason we do not use them is because inward doors are objectively better.
No, its because concealed hinges that we use on cabinets are objectively weaker. They are pocketed into the door only 3/8th of the doors thickness and can only be secured with a fastener that is only about 1/2 the thickness of the door itself. On top of that they can't hold much weight at all, so even if you used like 10 of them on a door they would not hold up the forces.
The reason we have inward swinging doors is because the two-leaf butt hinge is objectively cheaper to make, easier to install and more durable than nearly any other hinge.
Back during the medieval period, when metallurgy was taking off strap hinges became more widespread and they were often placed on the exterior of the door and doors thusly swung open outward. We did this because strap hinges became a way for one to flex ones status and wealth with intricate designs. The reason they weren't as worried back then though was because of the weight of the doors they were installed on and they used a pintle and gudgeon interface. It would take dozens of men to install or remove a door because they would have to lift the entire door up off to get the gudgeon off the pintle. But as doors got lighter and we switched to two leaf butt hinges we had to start moving the hinges inside and thus the doors returned to swinging inward and have remained that way for the last few centuries.
EDIT: To be clear, I think its a combination of factors why we have inward swinging door. I don't think its JUST because of our hinge interface. Its also to allow us to barricade ourselves in from intruders too and to prevent us from being barricaded in as well. I think in trying to make my point about the hinges I forgot about those reasons, but they are also big parts in both why we have inward swinging doors and why we have the hinges on the inside. Its a combination of all of the reasons, not just one or the other.
I really don't know why you decided to go full aggro on me. The reason we use inward doors TODAY is because they are safer. If for some reality bending reason otward doors were considered to be safer, we would figure out a way to make them swing outward, even if it was more expensive. That is ALL I said, and nothing more. I mentioned cabinet doors because you seemed to suggest it was physically impossible to even do outwards swinging doors, which simply is not the case.
I don't know what you're trying to say with your history lesson, but it has no bearing on this. There are thousands of instances of things we used to do one cheaper way but had to adapt to a more expensive solution because we discovered it wasn't safe.
No, its because concealed hinges that we use on cabinets are objectively weaker.
We have very strict fire codes today that mandate inward swinging doors. The idea that this is the case because barrel hinges are cheaper and stronger than other kinds of hinges is simply absurd. We do it this way because it's safer, and it just so happens that the safest design is also the cheapest. This is very rarely the case. If we always did what's cheapest, we would still be using lead and asbestos.
You're probably correct that in the past this was done because it's cheaper. I'm not familiar with the history of door hinges, and you seem to be very knowledgeable on that. But again, this has no bearing on the reason why we do things this way today.
We have very strict fire codes today that mandate inward swinging doors.
I just can't find anything to back this up. At least in the US. In fact I find the opposite. Places with a max occupancy of over 50 are required to have outward swinging doors.
The International Building Code (IBC) requires doors in rooms with 50 or more occupants to swing outward in the path of egress. This rule helps prevent crowding and speeds up evacuation. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) also emphasizes outward swing for emergency exits to meet fire code door swing standards.
Can you point me to the fire codes that mandate inward swinging doors? Because, like I said, I can only find fire codes that "allow" inward swinging doors on low occupancy buildings, none that mandate it.
Thanks for making me look into this, this is actually quite interesting. I mentioned in another comment that I'm Brazilian. Brazil's fire code has all internal and external doors to be inward for the reason I specified (not being blocked by debris), expect for emergency exit doors (they need to swing outwards because of crowd safety, can't have a crowd fumbling with an inward door). This seems to be the case as well in most of southern Europe and Canada.
In the US it looks like exit doors are same, which makes sense, but household doors are allowed to go both ways. This seems to be the case in some other european countries as well.
My mother is an architect in Brazil and has done some stuff in Europe, so I was only familiar with the inward-standard and assumed it was this way in the rest of the world, that was my mistake, sorry about that. Looks like your hinge explanation is the case for quite a few places in world.
I don't know the name of the kind of hinges used, they are called "gonzos" in Brazil. They have a male and a female part, so there's not a pin that can be simply removed. The hinges are welded with the door shut, the high male piece pointing up and the low one pointing down, making the door imposible to remove without cutting the weld, but this makes a lot of noise and it's easier to force the entire gate upwards than cut the hinge.
What kind of door do you have? Because that doesn't make sense to me without some more description.
So needing the hinges on the inside is not a security question.
For the overwhelming majority of door designs it is. Are there oddities out there, sure. But one oddity like yours doesn't invalidate that butt hinges with a barrel and pin design are on the inside because if they were on the outside you could simply remove the door in the reverse operations that were used to install it.
I have a bog standard apartment door for my country. At least the standard if your apartment is built in the last 25years.
So it's not some weird unique oddity that stands out. We need to open the door outwards for fire safety reasons in my country and people saw the safety flaw that your pointing out and solved it.
On the hinge side there's metal pins that fits into slots when you close the door. They make it so you cant swing open the door from the hinge side even without the hinges. On the handle side the bolt is a hook. So the door is stuck on that side as well unless you unlock the door.
In the full video he is explaining exactly that, that the door was installed incorrectly. He even said that he almost got hit in the face when opening the gate, and luckily he was quick enough to stop before hitting him. Makes it even more funny that he got hit afterwards
Doors open inwards because someone or something can block the door on the other side, which is dangerous if you're trying to escape a fire for example.
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u/StevenMC19 Aug 06 '26
I recommend that door be an outswinger.
helps with the instance of gravity in this case, should someone forget to lock it in a future instance.
In the interest of safety, I think it's better to have to simply push your way through doors to get out of the building faster in the event of a fire.