More Doors

Back in March I rated some types of doors. I concentrated on basic hinged residential doors, but of course there are many other types of doors out there. So now I'm going to rate some nonresidential doors.

Overhead Garage Doors: These are generally used for garages, service bays, or anything else that needs a large door that stores easily out of the way. There's something elegant about the simplicity of the design — just pull them up and they slide in the tracks up and out of the way, nice and simple. Very slick. Often they are motorized so they go up and down at the push of a button, which is even slicker. I'm calling these Good.

Automatic Sliding Glass Doors: These seem to be the door style of choice at supermarkets. Always automatically operated, usually by a motion sensor, these are pretty cool. They are completely zero effort for the person using them, although I imagine they require a fair amount of maintenance. When your arms are full of groceries the last thing you want to do is deal with a heavy door. Well, maybe not, since the last thing you want to deal with when carrying groceries is a pack of hungry hyenas, but a heavy door isn't good either. What I like most about these is that if you time it right, you can wave your hand and look as if you are using your telekinetic abilities to open to door. Okay, so I'm easily amused. But it's all Good.

Rotary Doors: I'm somewhat ambivalent about these. On the one hand they are quite different from other doors in that they rotate and only one person can go through at a time. On the other they are somewhat awkward, especially if you are wearing a big backpack. I know this first hand, as the library where I went to university used to have this type of doors (they went to standard hinged doors when they renovated a couple years ago) and when you have a lot of books in a bag on your back getting into the little quarter section of a rotary door can be tricky, especially if someone else is already going through and the door is moving. Also there is a brief moment of isolation when you're in the door and closed off from the rest of the world. It's somewhat of an odd sensation if you stop to take notice of it. Of course, stopping in the middle of a rotary door might annoy the people behind you wanting to use the door, and things could get Ugly.

Push-button Operated Doors: While I'm all for accessibility, some things done to help make everywhere accessible to everyone aren't such a great idea. One prime example I see every day at work, which are the 20 reserved wheelchair parking spots at the front entrance. Sure, it's a good sized parking lot, but that's way too many spots, and lots of people that shouldn't park there do because they resent so many good spots being reserved (or maybe these people are just lazy idiots, I'm not sure). Push button doors are a similar debacle. Sure, the idea is okay, but the implementation is often terrible. I've seen push button doors at the top of ramps that swing out in such a way as to make it difficult for a walking person to push the button without being pushed against the railing, and I'm sure it's even worse for someone in a wheelchair. Also sometimes these doors swing open and closed way too fast. Guess if you aren't a fast moving wheelchair user you are just out of luck. Push-button doors are a good idea that has turned out Bad.