AskCodeMan

CodeMan,
This is a general question, are there codes that require out swing doors along coastal areas? A friend of mine said this was code, I have never heard of this, he lives in Myrtle Beach S.C. I can see the logic, but is it a requirement?

Hi Chris,

There is some logic to it for older and unrated doors, but not for newer rated doors.

The reason and logic for older unrated doors is that the door can resist greater wind pressure if the door swings closed to the outside of the stop, with the door being pushed tight to the stop under heavy wind loading, which also helps seal the door against the weather stripping.

Many older doors (from the 1970s to the 1980s mostly) in South Florida were required to be out-swing by code for that reason. However, with better understanding of the codes, doors, windows, wind pressures, etc., the codes changed to requiring a given minimum pressure rating instead of requiring the doors to be out-swing.

The greater failure, though, for any unrated door will be one or more of several things, including (but not limited to):
- The door face itself may fail. An example would be a wood panel door where the wood panels blow out of their openings - those panels are not intended to resist high pressures.
- The door frame itself may fail. Even if you had a metal skinned door, the metal skinned door will have a wood frame around it, with honeycomb or foam filling the inside core, and while the skin may hold, it may pull of, or separate, the wood frame around the door between the two metal skins.
- The door hardware may fail. The most common failure point is the latch bolt, either the latch bolt itself may come apart or bend, or, the wood framing the latch bolt goes into may split.

More than the door swing would be having a properly rated door for the area, with the pressure rating being based on the anticipated wind speeds to be experienced during a high wind event.

You know that very pretty 9 raised panel door, stained and finished? Those panels are barely held in their opening, and the panels themselves are most likely several piece of wood glued together on edge to make a wide but thin panel. Not really much there to hold things in place with the wind picks up. Especially if there is only a latch bolt and even if there is a dead bolt too. Many doors with high wind ratings will have a 3-point latching mechanism which latches at the typical latch bolt location, then a bolt which slides up and down from the top and bottom at the latch side jamb. This gives 3 hinges anchoring the door on the hinge side and 3-point anchoring on the latch side: the latch bolt; top latch side corner; bottom latch side corner.

Thanks, it all makes sense from the "floating panels" in a wood door to the fact that the guy I was talking to was a builder in the Pawleys Island area in the mid 70's.