Electrical Room Door Swing

[WA_Sparky]

Hypothetically if you have two adjacent rooms both containing an 800A piece of electrical gear and there is a door between the two spaces. Would you be required to have a door with double sided panic hardware or remove the door completely?

 

[GoldDigger]

Is the door the only egress from one of the rooms?

 

[WA_Sparky]

Oh no I envisioned this being two rooms. Hallway has a door that leads to room 1 (mech room). Inside mech room is another door to room 2 (existing electrical room). Renovation comes and no room for additional 800A so one is added to mech space. No egress door for electrical room would swing into Mech room. Egress door of mech room swings into hallway.

I'm guessing you just partially answered my original question. Door swing must open in direction of egress. So technically there shouldn't be any scenario where two rooms would have doors opening into eachother because path of egress will be one way?

 

[BillyMac59]

By putting electrical switchgear in the mechanical room, you have made that room an electrical room. The rules for an electrical room now apply to the entire room. What about another wall between the newer switch gear and the rest of the mechanical room?

 

[GoldDigger]

Oh no I envisioned this being two rooms. Hallway has a door that leads to room 1 (mech room). Inside mech room is another door to room 2 (existing electrical room). Renovation comes and no room for additional 800A so one is added to mech space. No egress door for electrical room would swing into Mech room. Egress door of mech room swings into hallway.

I'm guessing you just partially answered my original question. Door swing must open in direction of egress. So technically there shouldn't be any scenario where two rooms would have doors opening into eachother because path of egress will be one way?

One potential situation I can think of where you might have a bidirectional egress is where two exits from a room are required, and an exit to another room rather than to the outside will still qualify as an exit from the first work area even though the second room itself may also require an egress.

 

[WA_Sparky]

One potential situation I can think of where you might have a bidirectional egress is where two exits from a room are required, and an exit to another room rather than to the outside will still qualify as an exit from the first work area even though the second room itself may also require an egress.

Perfect, so in this situation you mentioned above, would you tell architects to remove door between the two Electrical rooms (which id imagine makes two spaces one, therefore, each of the rooms remaining egress exits counts as (2) exits for the combined space)? Or is there a such thing as a door with panic hardware on both sides?