Panic Bars & Exit Devices in San Rafael
Exit devices fitted or repaired for restaurants, shops and back-of-house doors, $299 to $779 per door.
$299–$779
Typical price
21 min
Avg. arrival
24/7
Availability
A fire inspector pushes the bar once, with one hand, and expects the door to open. Marin Lock & Key holds the door to the same test. The kitchen exit of a Fourth Street restaurant. The side door of a gym near Northgate. The rear door of a clinic near Kaiser that lets out onto the parking lot. The community room of a Canal apartment building. A hall a block from the Rafael Film Center with two hundred people inside on a Friday evening. Rim devices, mortise devices and vertical-rod devices are installed, rebuilt and replaced, along with the lever trim outside, the closer above and the alarm that some doors need.
Four measurements settle which part goes on: the width of the leaf, its swing, its handing and the fire label on the edge. All four are taken before anything is ordered. A bar gone stiff, or a latch that no longer holds, usually means a worn cam or a strike that has crept, not a dead device, and a rebuild kit with an adjustment brings it back for a fraction of what a new one costs. When the device truly is finished, a new one goes on. On a vertical-rod unit the rods are trimmed so the top and bottom latches release at the same moment. The bar is then pressed at the center and at each end in turn, because a device that lets go only in the middle fails the inspector and would fail a crowd. Outside lever trim keyed to your building, a closer that carries the door all the way home, and a local alarm for a door the staff keep propping can all be fitted in the same visit.
Exit device work is named between $299 and $779 per door, hardware included. A rebuild, or a new rim device on a single standard door, is $299. Fire-rated vertical-rod devices on a pair of doors with lever trim and an alarm reach $779. The $89 service call is inside the figure. Ordinary rim devices ride on the van. Fire-rated and vertical-rod units often take a few days from the supplier, and you learn which case yours is on the call rather than with the door in pieces.
You call and describe the door: a photograph of the hardware on it now. The full figure per door is named. The van leaves and calls from the gate, or from the loading door, after the text with the name and the window. Fit: measuring, the rebuild or the replacement, alignment, a push test on the closed door, and a short note of anything else on that opening an inspector might question. The note is not a line on the bill. The receipt repeats the figure.
“The front door of our 1915 house closed behind me while I was watering the porch ferns, keys on the hall table. The call named $148. The text with the technician's name arrived while I was still on the porch, and the van was at the curb in seventeen minutes. He opened the original mortise cylinder without a mark on the brass, checked that the latch still caught, and the card was charged $148. The figure named on the call was the figure on the receipt, to the dollar.”
Every job is priced from the list below. The full figure is named on the call, before the van leaves the yard, and the receipt repeats it.
- Daytime (7am–8pm)standard rates
- Evening (8pm–12am)+$55
- Overnight (12am–7am)+$90
FAQ
Panic Bars & Exit Devices: quick answers
The county fire marshal has given the restaurant two weeks to fix the kitchen exit.+
If it is a single door wanting a rim device, that door is done the day you call, because those ride on the van. A fire-rated pair with vertical rods has to be ordered and generally arrives inside a week, which still leaves time to spare. The whole figure is named on the first call, so it can go straight into your reply to the marshal.
On warm nights the kitchen props the alley door with a bucket. Is there a hardware answer?+
An alarm mounted on the bar. The door still opens instantly from inside, as it must, but it sounds the moment it is held, and buckets stop appearing within a few shifts. Lever trim with a cylinder on the outside means the produce delivery can be let in without anyone silencing anything.
The door slams shut behind everyone. Is that the bar or the closer?+
The closer, and it is worth looking at in the same visit, since a closer that slams or stops an inch short makes a sound device seem faulty by never seating the latch. The technician checks it while at the door and names it as a separate line, so whether to do it is your decision.
Related
More commercial services
24/7 — nights, weekends & holidays
One call, one full figure, the same figure on the receipt
Calls answered 24/7 across San Rafael and the Marin towns beside it. The $89 service call, the labor, the parts and the drive up the hill are inside the figure named on the call, and the receipt repeats it.