Panic Bar & Exit Device Installation

It depends on your occupancy classification and occupant load, not on the business type alone. Assembly spaces — restaurants, bars, venues, houses of worship, gyms — trigger panic hardware requirements at occupant loads that many NYC storefronts hit easily, and other commercial occupancies require it on certain exit doors as well. The practical version: if the public gathers in your space, assume the exit doors need single-motion, no-key egress and get the specific answer for your certificate of occupancy. What's never legal is 'solving' security by chaining a required exit or stacking a deadbolt above a panic bar — that's the violation FDNY writes first. We'll assess your actual doors against your actual occupancy on-site.

From the outside, yes — from the inside, never. The correct setup is outside trim with a key cylinder (or an electrified strike or trim on access control) so entry is controlled, while the bar side always opens with one push. What you cannot do is add any inside-locking device — deadbolt, slide bolt, chain, hook — to a door required to have panic hardware, because the moment egress takes two motions or a key, the door is illegal and dangerous. If your real problem is people using an exit as an unauthorized entrance or walk-out, the legal fixes are an alarmed device, better door position switches on your alarm, or a camera on the door — and we install all three.

Rim devices are surface-mounted and latch into a strike on the frame — simplest, most serviceable, and right for most single doors. Mortise devices use a lock body mortised into the door edge, giving heavier latching and more robust keyed trim; they make sense on doors that already have a mortise prep or need the extra duty. Vertical rod devices skip the edge latch entirely and throw bolts into the frame head and the floor, which is how you secure a pair of double doors with no post between them — each leaf works independently. Concealed vertical rods hide inside the door for looks and tamper resistance, and they're the standard answer on narrow-stile aluminum storefront pairs, where there's no meat in the stile for anything else.

Usually, yes — and usually in one visit. Sticking bars are most often gummed or worn internal springs and a latch chewed out of shape by years of slamming; doors that won't relatch behind traffic typically have a strike out of alignment, a closer too weak to overcome the latch, or on vertical rod devices, rods knocked out of adjustment so the bottom bolt drags before the top latch seats. We carry common devices and parts in stock at our Brooklyn offices, so when a device is genuinely dead — cracked case, stripped dogging, obsolete model — we can typically swap it the same day rather than leaving an exit door unsecured overnight.

A rim device on a single steel door that's already in decent shape is a same-day, single-visit job, including outside trim if you want keyed entry. Pairs with vertical rod devices take longer because both leaves get devices and four latching points need adjustment under real closing pressure; concealed rods in narrow-stile storefront doors are the longest, since the hardware lives inside the stile. Doors that were never prepped for exit devices may need reinforcement first. We schedule around your operating hours — 24/7 — so a retail back door or restaurant exit gets done before open or after close, and the door is never out of service while you're full of customers.

Yes, and it's the right way to put an exit door on access control. From the inside nothing changes — the bar always opens the door mechanically, with no dependence on power or software, which is what keeps it legal. From the outside, entry is granted electronically: either an electrified strike that releases for the reader, electrified outside trim, or electric latch retraction inside the device itself, which also enables push-pull traffic during business hours. On fire-rated doors we spec fire exit hardware versions that keep positive latching. If you're also considering delayed egress — holding the door briefly with an alarm after a push — that's allowed only in limited NYC occupancies and must drop instantly on fire alarm, so ask us before buying hardware.