Share thisThe Key to Making the Right Choices
Proper selection of vivarium door hardware is a continuing challenge for owners and architects. Operational flexibility, heavy traffic, and increasingly stringent security needs have made the process challenging, and subtle differences between manufacturers or campus facility requirements make successful choices elusive. So how do you select the right locks, closers, strikes, and assorted door hardware? More than anything else, the selection of door hardware and security systems relies on careful planning, experienced designers, knowledge of existing facility standards, and a great deal of common sense.
This article will review the broad principles of functional needs and secure facility design, and then address in detail the door types, hardware, and systems used on secure entrance doors, typ ical holding rooms, and procedure rooms with respect to cost, ease of installation, use, and reliability under vivarium conditions Finally the article will define some basic terms used by hardware and security consultants.
The three major issues to consider for door and hardware selec tion are these:
- Door Function: access control and workflow management
- Door and Hardware Materials: simple and reliable components
- Durability and Protection: balancing first and life cycle cost
Door Function: Access Control and Workflow Management
Understanding the purpose of a door in the workflow of a vivarium is essential: Is it for functional separation, air separation, access control or monitoring, directional traffic flow, protection of room contents? Should the door be self-closing? The functional and security measures chosen by a particular facility will in turn help focus the selection of doors and hardware for the three main types of doors: holding rooms, procedure rooms, and the secure point of entry.
For doors with a need for access control, this can be provided either by key locks or card reader systems. Keys are the least expensive but hardest to manage, and provide no record of access. Card reader systems are the most versatile and manageable, but also more expensive. Biometric devices are the most secure and also the most expensive.
Access controlled doors should always be reviewed for free passage in the direction of egress under fire alarm, power failure, or other emergency conditions to meet building code requirements.
Vivarium Entrances: The main vivarium entry points are part of the primary secure perimeter, and provide access control and monitoring for people, materials, and animals. Entry doors are always locked, usually card access controlled and monitored, and often disguised or unmarked.