I would venture to guess 75% of incoming phones calls in LockNet’s Nationwide Repair & Service Department start with, “This is Name from Company; my [insert hardware of your choice here] is broken. How do I get a locksmith out?” Stuff breaks – and it’s inevitable. Whether it’s your iPhone or the closer on your office door, you don’t expect it to last a lifetime.

What you do expect is for your products to work as they claim they will and for as long as possible, right?! How long do you expect your iPhone to stick around and do its job properly? A solid four or five years would be nice. What if, instead of an iPhone, you paid $40 for a disposable phone at the local gas station? Four to five years probably isn’t going to happen and that’s ok. As long as you get four or five months out of it, it’s served its purpose.

The same can be said for your hardware – it’s getting as much use and abuse as those lifelines we call smartphones. What’s important to keep in mind is if you’re buying the $40 disposable phone equivalent of door hardware, it isn’t going to last as long as its iPhone equivalent.

ANSI/BHMA has made hardware grade standards to aid in determining the quality of products before you purchase them. These hardware grade standards help you understand the usage guidelines and expected product lifecycle by grading hardware based on cycle, functional strength, security, dimension and finish requirements.

What are Hardware Grades?

Hardware grades are a set of minimum performance standards that apply to products. These standards can also be used as a way to determine appropriate hardware application. Your hardware will fall into one of these three grades:

• Grade 1 hardware is made for heavy-duty commercial usage
• Grade 2 is made for light-duty commercial usage
• Grade 3 is made for residential usage

Grade determination is based on durability, lifecycle expectancy, and application uses – the predominant being the number of cycles (uses) a product will withstand before needing replacement.

Grade Three Hardware

Since Grade Three hardware is designed for residential usage, it is built to withstand a low cycle count. The doors at my house aren’t getting near the traffic volume as the restroom of a popular restaurant; because of this application restriction, if a Grade Three residential lever set is installed in a high-use environment, its hardware will quickly need replacing.

If your facility is currently using Grade Three residential hardware, I can all but guarantee you’re seeing a higher product replacement rate than you would like. We recommend replacing all of the Grade Three products to Grade One or Grade Two. The return on your initial investment will be clear in performance immediately, and you will quickly realize you’re calling your locksmith or service provider a lot less frequently.

Grade Two Hardware

When considering Grade Two hardware it’s important to remember it is designed for light-duty commercial applications, so if you’re facility has regular daily traffic of 100+ patrons – it’s being over worked.

That being said, there are plenty of facilities that are perfectly happy with Grade Two hardware, because their daily traffic is on the light end of the spectrum. This makes it equally as important to remember that, unlike Grade Ones, all Grade Twos are not created equal.

The minimum standards set by ANSI/BHMA are just that, a minimum. While some Grade Two hardware will perform at the higher end of the cycle count, others will barely meet that threshold. I would recommend consulting the manufacturer or hardware specialist to determine the quality of the product in question and decide if a higher quality Grade Two or a Grade One lever set would better serve your facility.

Grade One Hardware

Grade One hardware is designed for heavy-duty commercial use. These products will hold up through the use and abuse of busy facilities, function properly and keep your facility safe.

As always, proper installation is crucial in hardware performing the way it was designed and intended; if there are underlying door issues or the hardware was installed poorly – there will be performance issues throughout the entire lifetime of the door hardware. In order to see the best results, you should use a certified technician to install your fancy new hardware.

I can’t stress this enough – it’s important to bear in mind that while the higher grade locks have a higher initial cost, the lifetime cost of the lock decreases as the grade increases. If you’re a skeptic, check out this article on the lifetime cost of a lever set for reference.

Determining Current Hardware Grades

While researching for this article, I came across a reference that’s too good not to share. BHMA has a product numbering guide listed on their website that shows you how to look at your product number and determine the grade.

The prefix letter denotes the BHMA Product Section that produces the hardware.
The first numeral designates the base material for the product.
The second number identifies the type of product.
The third and fourth numbers identify the function of the specific item.
The fifth number indicates the performance grade of the product.

Using the example above, a specifier would refer to the ANSI/BHMA Standard for cabinet hardware, and ascertain that for product B 5 2 1 3 1 …

B = Product section for cabinet hardware hinges
5 = Stainless steel
2 = Cabinet knob
13 = Back mounted
1 = Grade one

In a more understandable format, this product is a Grade One, back-mounted stainless steel cabinet knob. You can see the BHMA example here; I copied this one straight from their website for referencing.

If your current hardware isn’t meeting your expectations, determine the grade you’re using and open the discussion of upgrading or switching to another vendor recommendation.
Google