650 to 1110mm: Which Push Bar Length Your Door Takes

Almost every exit-device enquiry we receive names a model and a finish. A good proportion of them do not name a door. That is the wrong way round, because the bar has to suit the leaf it is fitted to, and unlike a finish or a trim it is not something that can be adjusted with a file once the container has landed.

The published lengths across our range are 650, 800, 900, 1000, 1040, 1050 and 1110mm. Some models carry one figure and some carry several: the 307 is published at 1000mm and the 311 at 900mm, the 315 at 800mm or 1000mm, the 314 at 650, 800 or 1000mm and marked customizable, and the 302 and 302-S at 1040mm with the length adjustable. Two more are recorded simply as made to the length the customer asks for. The spread is not a styling choice; it is a range built to cover the door widths this industry actually installs.

The rule that matters is that the bar is sized to the leaf, not to the opening. On a double door, each leaf takes its own device, and the leaf is roughly half the clear opening less the meeting stile — so a 1800mm pair is not two 1800mm bars and is not two 900mm bars either. Working from the opening width rather than the leaf width is the single most common way a schedule arrives with the wrong length on it.

Nor should a bar be specified longer on the theory that longer is safer. A bar that overhangs the leaf fouls the frame, the stop or the adjacent leaf, and on a pair it prevents the doors closing. A bar that is short of the leaf leaves a strip at the hinge side or the lock side where a person arriving at speed makes contact with the door rather than with the bar — which is exactly the failure the device exists to prevent. Both errors look minor on a drawing.

Adjustable is a real feature and it is not universal, so it is worth asking about by name. Where a model is published as adjustable, the bar can be trimmed or set within a range to suit the leaf; where it is not, the length is the length. If your project has several door widths and you would prefer one part number across all of them, tell us at the enquiry, because the answer changes which models are candidates before anything else is discussed.

Three measurements make an exit-device enquiry answerable on the first reply. Leaf width, leaf thickness, and whether the opening is a single or a pair. Two more make it complete: whether the door is fire rated and to what, and whether the outside face needs to open at all — because outside trim is a separate order line with its own finish and its own handing, and a device ordered without it arrives as a door that opens one way only.

There is one number in our published range that is not a bar at all, and it is worth flagging because it appears in the same field. One record's size row reads 175 × 53 × 73mm, which is a case dimension rather than a bar length; that model is an exit-device lock case and belongs with the mortise bodies rather than with the bars. If you are reading our size column across the range, that is the row that does not mean what its neighbours mean.

Finally, a measurement we do not publish and will not estimate: we do not state a minimum or maximum leaf width against each bar length. The arithmetic looks obvious, and it is not — the usable width depends on the stile, the trim, the strike and on double doors the meeting stile as well. Send the leaf width and we will answer against the actual model. A number we worked out from a drawing is worth something; a number we worked out from a formula is worth nothing, and this site has a rule about the difference.