There’s an Exit sign in my office that is irrationally bugging me and I want to know why it’s there. I’m going to try and describe the layout as best as I can, but I think you all can get it…
First off, the building is three floors tall and has staircases to get from one floor to the other.
If you are looking at the front doors to the building (lets call this North just for simplicity) and walk inside then take an immediate right, and then another right (now you’re facing South) you walk through a door that holds one of the staircases. The thing about this stairwell though is that it will take you to the second and third floors, but that’s it. There is no door to the outside in that stairwell. That being said, there is an Exit sign on the OUTSIDE of this stairwell.
Why is there an exit sign there when going through the door doesn’t take you to an exit? No matter what you do in that stairwell you are still inside of the building (unless it goes to the roof or something).
Ironically enough, there isn’t an Exit sign on the INSIDE of the door where it does, in fact, take you to where you can exit the building.
I have no idea why this bugs me so much, but I want to know why that sign is there!
Any large building must surely have alternate emergency exits other than the main front doors. Do you know where they are? Are you sure that there isn’t an outside exit (of the “emergency exit only, alarm will sound” variety) accessed from that stairwell? If not, I tend to agree that it seems very odd. It seems implausible that a stairwell that grants only distant roof egress should be labeled like this.
I’d be willing to bet that, for any number of reasons*, the sign is supposed to be on the inside, as you guessed. Not only doesn’t it make sense to be there, it could be an issue if the ground floor becomes smoke filled and someone not familiar with the building (double that if they don’t know what floor they’re on) enters the stairwell trying to leave the building.
A few reasons could be that someone just mounted them at ‘all entrances to the stairwell’, as they were told, without thinking that last part out and possibly asking a question. A long with that, if the building is older, a fire inspector could have asked the owner to put some exit signs up and they just didn’t end up in quite the right spots…if there’s another stairwell, you could see where the exit sign is on that one.
But, my guess is that someone just did as they were told and stuck one at all entrances to the stairwell.
Oooh, one other thought, if the electrician put the junction box in the wrong place, the person hanging sign might not have been able to do a whole lot and it just never got fixed.
The exit sign is misplaced, or inadequately labeled.
OSHA regulations require exit signs be placed in a manner to get people out of a building using the quickest and safest route possible. An exception to this is an exit sign along with a directional arrow pointing to an actual exit when the actual exit is not clearly visible or immediately apparent.
Also, every workplace building must have at least two emergency exits.
(I knew my OSHA certification might come in handy!)
OSHA may have regulations on exit sign placement, but it’s the State and Local Building codes that we have to listen to.
Without seeing the plans of the building it’s difficult to guess what it is. There are sometimes no place to put a sign properly, or the Building Inspector, or Architect, or Electrical Engineer, or the electrician just said put it here.
Is the egress doors to the building all glass, or the ceiling too low, or no ceiling at all, or something else? It might have been a convenient location, or the best of a multitude of bad locations.
The egress path from the first floor (street level) offices – does it look ahead at the wall of the stairwell and not at the egress doors to the building? It may be guiding those people to the unseen egress doors.
Is there an arrow, like Cartoonacy said? Not quite necessary, if it’s obvious when you get near the sign where to go. Is the sign energized (powered), or just slapped on the wall. How old is the building, or at least when the lobby was last constructed? And yes, depending on location, it could be a screw-up by whoever put up the sign.
Isn’t the idea that every hall way should have two exits ? And have the exits marked.
The standard is that the stairwell is assumed to be an exit, so no need to have an exit sign inside a stair well…what else are you going to do ? knock a hole in the wall ?
Keep doing up and down the same flight ?
Why you don’t have any exit sign for the actual front door ? if you are trapped inbetween the front doors and a fire, you naturally head to the front door.
This exit sign says that its a reasonable escape to go into the stairwell, which probably has fire proofing right ? “Exit” also means “fire proofed area” … and well if you go up then you’d enter into the rising smoke , pass out and die. But the idea is that with no other option but up, you might just go to level one, or two, find that you are safe there and rush to another stair well down, and get out that way.
There are limits to the two exit rule, obviously. You are permitted “dead end” hallways to rooms / offices under a certain length hallway. Depends on building use, building is sprinkled, occupation load, etc.
Where exactly is this exit sign placed?
On the door? Above the door, next to the door, near-ish to the door?
The sign is placed above the door frame, just where you would expect it to be if it were an ACTUAL exit.
Other things to address:
The building is actually quite new. I couldn’t tell you an exact date of build, but it’s within the last 5 years for sure.
I use that stairwell to go from my office on the 2nd floor out the front door when I go get lunch, I am 100% positive that there is NO exit within that stairwell
If the first floor were filled with smoke (aside: this is unlikely because the lobby is massive) and someone were looking for an exit, they would just go less than a foot to the right and walk out the front door.
At the end of the day I agree that I think it was just placed in the wrong place (or, like someone suggested, some wonky electrical thing). Although it’s good to know that I wasn’t being bugged to all hell for no reason.
ETA: I just checked and there is no arrow pointing to the door. We do have an exit sign above an outside door pointing to the left…where there is no door…but none at the original door I mentioned. Holy crap the Exit signs in this place are weird…
[QUOTE=Sir T-Cups]
The sign is placed above the door frame, just where you would expect it to be if it were an ACTUAL exit.
[/QUOTE]
Then I got nothing.
You would think that an improperly placed sign would be caught by regular safety inspections. When we have our yearly fire safety inspection at work they check not only fire alarms and extinguishers but for properly placed and powered exit signs. We had to put up some new signs a couple of years ago in order to pass the inspection.
So you’re sure there is no emergency exit within the stairwell. But it would help complete the picture if you could identify where the alternate emergency exit(s) actually are, since they must surely exist. This was confusing:
… you’re saying that this is an alternate emergency exit (other than the main front door), but with another exit sign pointing away from it?
As long as we’re all overthinking this, here’s another theory.
The person putting up the signs bought an “<EXIT” sign instead of an “EXIT>” sign for the stairwell. Instead of fixing it, for whatever reason, they put the “EXIT” sign on the door you’re looking at and the “<EXIT” sign on the other door.
It’s also very possible that someone just didn’t realize didn’t realize or didn’t notice the arrows when they were grabbing the various signs out of their truck.
[Quote= Sir T-Cups]
If the first floor were filled with smoke (aside: this is unlikely because the lobby is massive) and someone were looking for an exit, they would just go less than a foot to the right and walk out the front door.
[/quote]
There could be other reason for low visibility without the building being filled with smoke. It could be night when the lights are off, there could be a power outage and with just a backup generator running, there could be a fire in that vicinity causing the immediate area to be filled with smoke.
The regulations are general and often don’t make exceptions for things like ‘if you have a massive lobby’ or ‘if the street lights are plenty bright’ etc. You’re local inspector may very well give you the okay, however.
We have a parking garage next to the building that is connected to the building via an outdoor covered bridge. The exit sign that’s above the door to that bridge has the arrow pointing left. But to the left of that door is, literally, nothing because if I were to step left I would be over the railing and falling to the first floor. So unless that sign is directing me towards the stairwell that’s across the building from it (a different one than in the OP) then it’s really weird and pointless and confusing.
Even if you switched that sign with the original one that bugs me the arrow would be pointing the wrong way
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this exit sign is improperly placed … although it “looks like” it’s correct. The inspector maybe had a checklist with him, “Are there exit signs over all the doors leading to the stairwell”, check … no further thought required.
Two signs were needed in this corridor, one with arrow one without. Sign without arrow over actual exit; sign with arrow over door to stairwell, to guide people away from stairwell without egress to actual exit. Sign with arrow was ordered incorrectly, pointing wrong direction. Installer gets confused, switches the two signs. Inspector doesn’t catch it.
The sign without the arrow is on the first floor. The sign WITH the arrow is on the second. They aren’t in the same corridor. They’re actually on opposite ends of the building.
For all I know there are other weirdo signs around the building…I don’t explore much.
Ok, but “I don’t explore much” seems a little inconsistent with your curiosity about all this, and with your apparent absolute certainty that there is no exit via the stairwell in question!
So we’re still missing an important piece of information. An alternate emergency exit on the first floor must surely exist - it’s plausible that the signs are wrong, but surely not that the building was designed without an emergency exit at all. If you’re sure it’s not in the stairwell, where is it?
The building is decently large, I haven’t walked the entirety of it because I don’t have much of a reason to. The signs I know of are en route from my cube to the break room/my car/outside. I know, for an absolute fact, that there is no exit in that stairwell to outside because that’s the 'well I use literally every day.
