Door closers. Yes, door closers.
Added 2024-08-21 21:02:48 +0000 UTCGot something really exciting for you!
Hey so remember how I said in that update that a video on dehumidifiers was next? Ha! Ha ha! Ha ha huh HAA I fooled you!
Or rather, I discovered after about eleventy million rewrites that the actually interesting thing which needs to be talked about should not, in fact, be a fun fact among several which only appears 15 minutes into the video but should instead by the main focus of the video. My initial "here are three different kinds, let's have 'em battle it out" concept just isn't relevant to the message I want to convey and it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that out.
So I dug out one of my ripcord topics which, conveniently, can now be demonstrated thanks to the office!
I may shelve the dehumidifier video until the spring. I know those of you who live where the stars are upside-down might be bringing them out before long but we'll be putting ours away pretty shortly. I had written a joke about how "timely" I was but, well, now it's just embarrassing.
Expect another main channel video before the month is out, though I haven't committed to what that will be yet. Which should give you something of a clue as to its quality...
Comments
Fun fact: New York City has (or had) two specific civil service titles called "Door Stop Maintainer" and "Supervisor Door Stop Maintainer". Their primary purpose was to maintain these things. There were a few on payroll until at least 2012, though it looks like the last contract covering them lasted until 2018.
Reaver8492
2024-08-27 15:44:17 +0000 UTCBTW: I'm wondering now about another topic, maybe it might be worth for you to make a video about: sliding doors!
MrHammond
2024-08-24 07:48:02 +0000 UTCWe have the problem with the door not closing well when the heating season starts at my office, I always have to create a ticket to have them come by and readjust the door closer...
MrHammond
2024-08-24 07:45:16 +0000 UTCLove the video! One thing about the temperature control of buildings with automated doors in vestibules that are always open - there is a technology for that, air curtains! Although I've only seen them installed rarely
Joseph Dufour
2024-08-24 07:08:27 +0000 UTCI’ve waited this long for a video on dehumidifiers, I guess I’ll just have to accept I need to wait longer. But damnit we will demand it in the Spring!!
The Great Quux
2024-08-24 00:54:46 +0000 UTCYou'll be pleased to know having watched this video I can now enter my office without announcing myself with a bang. Our facilities managers didn't even know it was something that could be adjusted and now they do.
naxxfish
2024-08-23 15:34:38 +0000 UTCDoes your door actually have the hold open functionality, or was that, uh, staged?
adcurtin
2024-08-23 04:58:40 +0000 UTCNice! I knew the dual adjustments existed, but didn’t know how they worked-now I do! Thanks!! Informative and fun, as usual!
Markintosh
2024-08-23 04:25:37 +0000 UTCYou did it again! Totally super informative!
Donald J Arndt
2024-08-23 02:44:07 +0000 UTCYou, with a bugbear? Never!
Max Goldstein
2024-08-23 00:22:30 +0000 UTCYou talk about "heavy" doors, but what you really mean is a door that is hard to open. Of course doors can really be heavy, in the literal sense, or not. An old wooden door from the 19th century is a lot heavier -- in the literal sense -- than a modern flimsy glass-and-metal, or not-much-more-than-cardboard door. And all that plays into the kind of door closer you need, and how to adjust it.
Martin Ibert
2024-08-22 17:42:28 +0000 UTCAt work we had new door closers installed (for fire code reasons) at two "interior" doors (or "four" since they are split doors) in the last year. They seem to be very simple: One linear rail and a spring. Only seems to have one speed, and quite "janky". But they do have a built-in magnetic latches (at the end of travel), and the right one releases with a short delay after the left. Probably cheaper, (and it wouldn't be able to install wall mounted magnetic latches on the bottom floor). (*They are between a stairwell and the two floors/areas of the store, the stairwell is technically "public" [and it could be accessed by the other business], but we are the only ones who uses it. This is in an old [ca 1850] factory building, not designed with multiple occupants in mind)
Chris Hindefjord
2024-08-22 17:41:35 +0000 UTCRevolving doors are a dying breed here in Germany, because, well, they are injury and death traps. A serious of widely-reported cases of death or injury has left them very, very unpopular. All I can say is "Good Riddance!" https://www.dguv.de/medien/ifa/en/pra/karussell/gefaehrdungsbeurteilung.pdf
Martin Ibert
2024-08-22 17:33:32 +0000 UTCAround here, they are very common in residential buildings too. Ours has one each on the front and back doors to the building. And since the front door is a 125+-year-old, very beautiful, but also very heavy wooden door (very probably the original front door from when the building was first build towards the end of the 19th century), the adjustability helps us trying to balance between the door not latching and the door slamming shut and sending a loud "BANG" through the staircase. Not very successfully though. The back door is a modern boring glass-and-metal door.
Martin Ibert
2024-08-22 17:01:06 +0000 UTCI have a door closer which has a quick release at the outer end of the lever. It's easy to detach the closer from the door if the door has to stay open and as easy to connect it back. That voids all the safety measures though.
Juho K
2024-08-22 16:31:54 +0000 UTCNo extra subtitles at the end? 😢
Nigel Thornberry
2024-08-22 15:10:55 +0000 UTCThanks. Now I'm going to think about fireplace just being fireplace all day.
Earl Plotner
2024-08-22 12:48:59 +0000 UTCPublic paws pinched publicly produced problems!
Hylke van der Schaaf
2024-08-22 11:08:36 +0000 UTCThis explains why the hotel doors in many American hotels slam with the loud noise you'd expect from a thick heavy door even though the door itself doesn't seem to offer much sound insulation!
Richard Bevan
2024-08-22 10:52:24 +0000 UTCWe have a door at work (from the break room to outside) that doesn't always latch because the HVAC is screwy and the air pressure in there makes it behave weird. I actually had no idea this was so easy to do, imma go at it with a screwdriver tomorrow
Sara Urban
2024-08-22 05:26:06 +0000 UTCHospitals have tons of the magnetically held-open fire doors since the building is designed to contain fire so total evacuations are not needed. The first time the fire alarm went off at work after I'd started and they all closed, I was like "There are doors there...." :D The "lobby" for our server room has magnetic door holders on a 2-way switch! Makes it so much easier to push a rack up or down the ramp without holding the doors open. And even if you are outside, you still have to badge in to get the door open in the first place. Our server room itself has a double-door setup on one side. If you open them all the way, they stay open until you close them.
Jason Wellband
2024-08-22 02:35:29 +0000 UTCWhen one door closes… this might be why. 😂
Orlando Navarro
2024-08-22 02:33:55 +0000 UTCAt the intersection of rotating doors for temperature control and door closers having to overcome pressure differentials lies the design of tall temperature controlled buildings. The Burj Khalifa is an extreme because of its height and its temperature differential. Cold air is denser than hot, so in a tall building your bottom floors have a pressure differential to outside equal to that density difference times the height, and it’s a big deal. The entire air column of the building is going to try to escape when you open a lobby door. There are pressure relief systems, increased air pressure criteria for walls, motorized door openers so the doors don’t fling violently open when you unlatch them and interlocks on vestibule doors so that you can’t open both sets in an airlock at once. If you have a terrace, the door will not open to the outside while the unit door is open to the hallway. There’s probably a more entertaining presentation of it somewhere, but there’s a paper here https://global.ctbuh.org/resources/papers/download/1234-burj-dubai-stack-effect-passive-stack-effect-mitigation-measures-in-the-design-of-the-worlds-tallest-building.pdf
Tyler Smith
2024-08-22 02:17:54 +0000 UTCI put one of these on my garage door (the one going into the house, not the one the car goes thru) and a friend could not figure out how to work it!! He kept trying to pull it closed, and actually got very angry when it fought him. I was literally dumbfounded watching this and couldn't say a word.
Crash Cash
2024-08-22 02:16:30 +0000 UTCYet another DIY video to justify my Patreon subscription. Thanks, Alec! The front door on my apartment no longer swings closed like a guillotine trying to chop off my fingers!
Dre
2024-08-22 00:08:35 +0000 UTCThis is totally unrelated, but my office is currently renovating and the contractor has had to test the fire alarms many, many times. According to the water cooler talk, there are particularly nitpicky code requirements that an inspector keeps needing to see fixed. Listening to you talk about fire doors made me think of this. And I wondered, how interesting is all the commercial fire alarm and suppression technology, if you were to dig deep on it? 👀
Devon Redekopp
2024-08-21 23:54:58 +0000 UTCI didn't even know these were door closers; I thought they were the things that held the door open when fully opened instead (and that the doors just were designed to close on their own). Thanks!
Pietro Gagliardi
2024-08-21 22:43:08 +0000 UTCIf my experience is anything to go by, everybody cheered you for finally solving the problem with the slamming doors, and no one at all gave you strange looks not understanding at all what the problem was in the first place... yeah.
RTT12
2024-08-21 22:30:57 +0000 UTCSomewhat related, this old tony has a great video on over center mechanisms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia3Iieejyg8
Sergey K
2024-08-21 21:52:14 +0000 UTCI will go blue in the face holding my breath for a dehumidifier video
Michael Poirier
2024-08-21 21:48:47 +0000 UTCI wish my door closer had an Allan wrench fastener for the valve adjustments. Instead, it has a weird inverted flat-head fastener where the "flat" of the fastener sticks out rather than being cut into the head. And the screw that I suspect is the "weight" adjustment (where your example closer has the three indents, presumably for a tool) is a regular flathead, if a regular flathead slot could be 1/4" thick. It has signed of being forced, too, so I have avoided dealing with it. I may just need to replace the whole thing.
Drendude
2024-08-21 21:40:31 +0000 UTCRocket surgery 🤣
Rich Theobald
2024-08-21 21:27:04 +0000 UTCNow finally something I've expertise in, dealt with door closers daily for a good while
AsbestosDust
2024-08-21 21:06:42 +0000 UTC
