On Being ICE'd

How about those push button operated door openers. This one's a little subtle, but I believe the premise is that able bodied folk should NOT use the button, just open the dang door. It's really meant for people in a wheel chair or with a walker.

 

Or when it is cold, raining or snowing and the driveway is slippery or for the aged (said at 76.93). Garage door openers are like presence sensing lights in the hallways and bathrooms and garages. They just make sense.

You'll be old some day.

 

"Imagine if twenty electric cars all hit a filling station at once... ...THAT would cause an uproar!"

Not really. Most drivers would just go to then next gas station on the block.

 

LOL!
Those I press with reckless abandon. Or sometimes, maybe occasionally and with no guilt.
Mostly because the main difference is if I press the automatic door opener button, I'm not precluding anyone else doing it later.
I don't feel the premise is exclusively that the auto open function should only be used the disabled or handicapped. In fact I'm sure I've seen some where it was encouraged that everyone use it.
We have at least one at work, that everyone uses. because the door being hooked up to hydraulics makes it hard to open without using it.

 

Yeah, I think the logic with the doors, at least some, was the opener motor had a limited number of cycles, it was excess wear-and-tear if everyone used them. But yeah...

 

.

 

At $work, there are a whole bunch of buildings, all of which have at least some electric accessible doors, and 40,000 people to go through doors every hour.

At the entrances where I know one of the doors has such a mechanism and the one beside it doesn't, I'll usually go through the one that doesn't, both because the ones without are a lighter pull to open, and because I'm not putting any wear on the mechanism.

Every time one of those mechanisms wears out, it seems to involve a minimum hour or two for a two-person team dispatched from physical facilities, plus the cost of the mechanism, and I don't think those are cheap. And it's not uncommon to see happening in one building or another.

I've never tried to find the right person to ask what that adds up to in the annual budget, but I think it ain't peanuts.

 

For a while I was ready to believe that it was a pro-sales design feature. The first electric door gets you to wrench a muscle in your back, so then you need an electric door everywhere you go. Shareholder fantasy kit.

 

I watched a show a few years (or decades...) back, discussing the ergonomics of doors, especially public building doors. It was pointed out that some doors give precious few clues as to which side has the hinges, which side to push.

That show is kinda hard-wired in my brain now, due to all the times I've encountered doors like that. You walk up to them, they maybe have a full width push bar or panel, and yeah... Looking for clues, like does one end have more hand prints, lol.

 

Our labs have double doors with the second door just being half wide, for getting large equipment, like freezers and biohoods, in. On the half door of the lab I used to work in, there was a metal flange on it that blocked the gap between the doors. No such piece at the current lab, and I was trying to open the door the wrong way at first.

 

Ah, another Midvale grad!

 

On a somewhat related note, The Far Side is now officially on the web.
A Letter From Gary Larson | TheFarSide.com | TheFarSide.com

 

Hey, I've seen that cartoon since forever, but just now noticed: is that the door closer up there in the top left? With the valve body and the elbow links? On the "PULL" side of the door?

Poll: carelessness on Gary Larson's part? or deliberate, to suggest the door itself was hung by another Midvale grad?

 

“Sooner or later, we ALL push on the ‘pull’ door.....”

 

Actually, some door closers are installed on the pull side - at least newer models are. I don't know about the older model shown in the cartoon.

 

Likely a mistake on Larson's part. I don't recall ever seeing a closer for the pull side, and the cartoon is quite old at this point.

 

Google images, and you will see that most of the newer ones install on the pull side. However, you are probably right about the older models depicted in the cartoon. I remember them when I was in grammar school, but I cannot picture how they operated.

 

I'm sure it's a mistake. Mounted that deep into the corner, the closer would provide interference in the recessed jamb. Beyond that, you'd want the hardware inside; out of the weather.

Larson made a lot of technical jokes without completely knowing all of the technology- just enough to be sure the punchline would hit truly. The art shows it.