Image courtesy of Lockwood
Under the Deemed-to-Satisfy provisions of the Building Regulations 2006 there are three important concessions in the Building Code of Australia (BCA) for exit doors and doors in the path of travel. These concessions permit doors to be provided with non-lever door furniture and dead-latching (Clause D2.21):
- Apartments, flats or the like within Residential buildings;
- Sole-occupancy units in Office, Retail, Warehouse or Factory type occupancies where the floor area is not more than 200m2; and
- “A space which is otherwise inaccessible to persons at all times when the door is locked”
At a practical level these concessions recognise some common security concerns for store rooms etc and also mean strip type shops, offices, lockups etc can use non lever door furniture and non escape type latching. Let’s look at these concessions in more detail.
