Which Exit Device Standard Your Project Is Actually Under

Buyers ask us for "a CE panic bar" or "an ANSI Grade 1 exit device" as though the two were points on one scale, with CE somewhere below ANSI or the other way round. They are not. They are two separate regulatory systems, written by different bodies for different building codes, and the question of which one applies is settled before anyone chooses a supplier — by where the door is and what the authority having jurisdiction there enforces.

EN 1125 is the European standard for panic exit devices operated by a horizontal bar, on escape routes used by the public. Its companion, EN 179, covers emergency exit devices operated by a lever or push pad, for buildings where the occupants know the building and are unlikely to panic — a staff corridor rather than a cinema. The distinction is about the people behind the door, not the hardware: EN 1125 assumes a crowd pressing forward, which is why the operating element has to run most of the door width and release under a load applied anywhere along it.

ANSI/BHMA A156.3 is the North American standard for exit devices, and it grades products 1, 2 or 3 on a cycle-test basis. A Grade 1 device is tested to a higher cycle count than Grade 3; both are Grade-rated exit devices. That is a durability classification, and it is doing a different job from EN 1125's, which is a conformity assessment against a set of pass/fail requirements including fire performance and release force. "Grade 1" and "EN 1125" are not comparable claims. A device can hold one, both, or neither.

Fire rating is a third axis again, and the one most often collapsed into the other two. A fire-rated exit device has been tested as part of a fire door assembly, and the certificate covers that assembly — the leaf, the frame, the hinges, the closer and the device together — not the device on its own. This is why a supplier who answers "is it fire rated?" with a simple yes is either simplifying or has not read their own report. Ask what assembly was tested, and by whom.

So the practical sequence is: where is the door, what does the local authority enforce, is it on an escape route, will the public use it, and is the opening fire rated. Those five answers select the standard. Only then does the hardware conversation start, and by that point most of the catalogue has already been excluded.

Where we sit in that: our EN 1125 test evidence is a report from Intertek Testing Services Shenzhen Ltd., Guangzhou Branch, reference 130722068GZU-001, issued 7 November 2013, and it covers one model — KD070/30-290. There is also a CE Certificate of Conformity to EN 1125:2008 from CELAB in Italy, 2010, covering the panic exit device series. We publish both with their exact scope on our certifications page, and we do not present either as blanket approval for every device we make, because it is not. If your specification needs current evidence against the current edition of a standard for a specific model, the honest answer is often that a re-test is required, and it is better to know that before the order than after the inspector asks.

One thing worth checking early, whichever standard applies, is whether the device suits the door leaf you actually have. A rim device fixes to the face of the door and needs a strike on the frame. A mortise device needs a lock case pocket cut into the leaf edge. A vertical-rod device throws bolts into the head and threshold and is what a pair of doors with no centre mullion requires. Getting that wrong is not a compliance problem, it is a physical one, and it is discovered on site.

Send us the door schedule rather than a product code. What we need is the leaf material and thickness, whether the opening is single or double, whether it is fire rated and to what, which standard the authority enforces, and whether outside access is required — and if so, by lever, by key, or not at all. That is five lines, and it is enough for our engineering desk to name the devices that can actually be specified rather than the ones we would like to sell.