The Nerd Cat
Foxes in Love
Gustavo@FoxesInLove Being a civil engineer I guess it's due to the fire code: it's not allowed to prop a fire-proof door open unless you have a mechanism that automatically closes such a door if a fire gets detected or in case of a power loss. That being said, I notice that people love to violate this part of the code: it's too annoying and those mechanisms can be a little expensive (as those are specialized equipment).
@FoxesInLove The door holder itself is 17 bucks on Alibaba, but you should also factor that you need to connect it to the fire alarm system, wiring and labour costs, which vary a lot from place from place (and in some places you can't install it yourself) so costs add up quickly.
Megan Lynch (she/her)@qgustavor @FoxesInLove OTOH, if more places did this...not even for cyclists specifically but for disabled people who cannot manage the hand/arm strength to open it on their own at the very least...it would no longer be specialty equipment because everyone who had a fire door would also be buying an automatic opener. #Accessibility
Magnus Ahltorp@qgustavor @FoxesInLove It is allowed to design a door so that it needs to be propped up to actually be used, but it isn’t allowed to prop up that door while you use it, do I understand this correctly?
Civil engineers really need to take the courses we other engineers take that teaches us that there are actual humans that need to use our things, and if we don’t accommodate their needs we can just as well go home.
@ahltorp @FoxesInLove I'm talking mostly from experience (fire codes can change between places, I mostly know the one from my state) and my first language isn't English (but I hope I'm expressing myself correctly) but the idea is the following:
Fire-proof doors are meant to be kept closed in case of a fire so it contains the fire in one place, preventing it from spreading. Most of those doors are not connected to fire alarms, so those should be kept closed, otherwise they can't do their job, contain the fire.
One could argue that if you used something fire-prone to prop up the door could be at least better than a rock, it would catch fire and close the door before the fire could spread further. But that's not what the code says, so it would fail inspection. 
cerement@qgustavor @ahltorp @FoxesInLove
prop the door open with a fire extinguisher
molosovsky 🐿✊💗@FoxesInLove Cyclists are a natural enemy of fire security doors.