I’m trying to envision this as every front door that I’ve come across has a threshold that would prevent such a thing, with or without a screen door. Do you have a picture that shows this?
If it’s raining that severely when the door’s open, shutting it could lead to run-off from the inward face of the door.
But in all my life, I’ve not known this to be a problem with inward-opening front doors. They tend to be slightly inset for one thing, and if it’s raining that badly, you don’t open the door that long. And you’d have a door-mat anyway.
Switzerland is almost always inward. Also seen in Airbnbs in Scotland, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, etc.
For more recent builds, especially for a public building such as a cinema, doors open outwards. But for a private home, even for a multi-family building, the doors open inward.
My first thought when I read about strange goings on in “Finland”, is does this Finland place truly exist? The question is far from settled.
But it is. Where else could the Moomins have come from?
After a disastrous cinema fire in 1927 (70+ children died) mainly due to an exit door opening inwards, and the resulting stampede to get to it and open it (which failed), in Montreal a law was enacted forcing all emergency exit doors to open outwards.
In addition - a law was passed (repealed in 1961) making it illegal for children under 16 to attend movies in Montreal (there were exceptions). Cinemas just outside the city limits did a booming business.
I lived in a student flat, in an old home broken into two units. Entry to my upstairs flat meant coming into an entry hall, where there were 3 or 4 steps up to the door, which opened outward, the steps up continuing once through the door. It was the first outward facing door I’d ever encountered I think. At any rate, there was no actual landing, just the top step. And no one was anticipating a door opening towards them. So if anyone knocked, I go down and fling the door open, pretty much knocking them down the few steps.
It was weird to me, for sure.
Haven’t encountered another since.
Which is the reason the door couldn’t open inwards.
I just checked the regs here in Ontario (building and fire codes) and the concern is entirely about requiring the exit doors of any high-occupancy building to open in the direction of egress – i.e.- outwards. Inward-swinging exterior doors are permitted only in private residences or low-occupancy buildings. That said, virtually all exterior doors in private houses are inward-swinging. I’m sure outward-swinging ones exist – in fact I had one in my own previous house – but they’re exceedingly rare. I believe the reason is the potential for outward-swinging doors to be blocked by some obstruction.
In my case, the outward-swinging door was the consequence of a major remodeling that made it impractical to have it swing inward. I looked up the regs because I was curious about whether this actually violated building code, but apparently not – it’s just normally not recommended. Being a security-conscious paranoiac, I remember taking a close look at the hinges, which of course were on the outside in this case, and they were in fact properly tamper-proof. The pins were secured by set screws that could only be accessed when the door was open.
Obviously not.
One of my doors has those secure hinges on them to prevent the pins from being pulled and the door removed unless the door is opened a bit. When my door nob broke and I could not get the bolt pulled back even after removing the knob, I pulled the hinge pins. Much to my consternation those security hinges work very well. Had to get a saw and cut the bolt.
Hinges are a major factor. To swing outward some part of the hinge must be outside allowing the pins to be removed or just cut off to gain access. Of course there are security hinges that make that difficult to do, but with increasing cost and maintenance issues.
Once upon a time to be secure the hinges needed to be on the outside of doors. These were strap hinges that extended well across the door and the wall it was mounted on. These hinges were secured with doornails, long wrought iron nails with thick heavy heads. These nails would be double-clinched, driven through from the outside, bent over in two places and then hammered back into the wall from the inside. With that done the nails could not be removed from the outside. If this was done with the hinge on the inside the nails could be pried back and hammered back through the wall from the outside. This double clinching of the nails is used as an explanation for the phrase ‘dead as a doornail’. Being bent twice like they can’t be easily straightened and re-used, so ‘dead’. Apparently it’s not clear if that’s the source of the phrase though.
Modern door hinges needed the development of wood screws to hold up heavy doors, and of course made the interior pins and inward swing the most secure configuration.