Automatic door locks

[childetx]

I have been reading ct for a couple of months now in preparation for building a home that just recently had the foundation poured. Thanks to everyone for the answers to many questions!

My question is regarding electric door locks. I would like to control the locks (lock, unlock, codes, etc.) from my HAI OmniPro II. I have already ordered some Kwikset Z-Wave locks and am optimistic that these will work. However, there are two drawbacks that are making me reconsider my purchase. First, I am not thrilled about having to change the batteries every year. Second, I have a couple of doors that are far away, and in one case behind a 12" thick concrete wall, that will not work without some type of z-wave repeater/extender. I am not putting Z-wave switches throughout my house, but am rather only using it for these locks.

Given that this is new construction and I can pre-wire for something, is there not an electric lock that I can control from the OPII and supply voltage via a hard wire, while still maintaining features such as keycodes for entry? I would appreciate someone directing me to something like this -- or explaining why such solutions just don't exist.

 

[Frunple]

You can use the omni's access control features. So you will have a card reader at each door with electric door strikes. Swipe a card on the reader and the door opens. You can also open out from the omni remotely.
You can also use the omni's outputs to control the strikes without a reader.
You can also get electric dead bolts and control them the same way.

 

[Del91574]

Standard electric strikes or electrified handlesets.

Either way, make sure your door hardware has the capability of opening freely without having to move a latch,etc. from the inside/secure side otherwise you're creating a deathtrap in case of fire.

 

[childetx]

Thanks for the replies.

I am looking at the seco-larm sd-997bq, an electric deadbolt controllable from the hai. This is the failsafe version. However, in the event that there is a fire and the power does not go out, should I have an egress button by every door?

I am not sure I will be able to wire my smoke detectors up to the hai. Depends on what my builder is putting in.

Thanks again.

 

[mustangcoupe]

please correct me if I am wrong... but

Fail-safe means with no power to the device it is unlocked. Fail-secure means with no power to the device it is locked.

which would mean in a failure condition you are leaving your house unlocked?

When I installed my strikes (not deadbolts) I went with fail secure because you could just turn the handle as normal from inside to get out.

 

[childetx]

That is an interesting idea to use strikes. With deadbolts, I would want fail safe, so you could exit in the case of fire and power outage. However, I would think that you would need an egress button in case of fire and the power had not gone out.

 

[mustangcoupe]

I agree if you are going fail safe then you need a way to trigger the lock to let you out, either an egress button (Push to exit request) or a motion sensor pointed at a narrow area around the door to unlock when you get near it.

 

[gatchel]

Deadbolts are death traps. Even fail-safe ones can stick over time and need "special knowledge" to get them to unlock.

I would use a fail-secure electric leverset or a strike as mentioned above...

 

[chedemefedeme]

I'll jump in here. I'm interested in the zwave type schlage electric deadbolts. They can be turned by hand from the inside so they're safe and secure during different failure situations.

My curiosity is about how to integrate these with my Elk. Is there any kind of serial interface to these things? Or can I perhaps command them via IP? I've already got a little server here that I use to read commands from the elk serially and send out commands on my IP network to control devices the Elk isn't compatible with but I'd love to know if some type of HTTP control scheme exists for the schlage/zwave gateway?

My end goal is to have these locks controlled by the Elk and its RFID reading capabilities.

 

[Del91574]

I agree if you are going fail safe then you need a way to trigger the lock to let you out, either an egress button (Push to exit request) or a motion sensor pointed at a narrow area around the door to unlock when you get near it.

In my line of work, a REX PIR is not acceptable to the AHJ's as an emergency form of egress, especially so with maglocks and fail safe. You need a way to permanently interrupt power to the lock in the event of emergency.