Fire door safety week – how to maintain compliance when working at speed
Retrofit doors are often required with a tight deadline to help complete a project on time or to replace a non-compliant or hazardous door quickly. However, it is important not to cut corners on compliance to receive a fire door faster, as this will result in non-compliance, a dangerous building and the door will still need to be replaced.
How to ensure fire door is fully compliant when working at speed:
- Understand which doors are required
Whether you are specifying new doors or retrofitting doors, it is important to understand which doors are required for your project. It is crucial that doors have been tested to the duration outlined in the building design, which is typically 30, 60, 90 or 120 minutes.
Fire ratings and classifications can be complex, but it is important to understand what classification of performance the door has been tested to. As a minimum, fire doors must be tested to BS 476-22 for the duration a door can resist the passage of fire. However, doors tested to BS 476-22 don’t include smoke so further testing will be required if the door is required to resist the passage of smoke.
In addition, as of 2 September 2029, all national standards for both the reaction and resistance to fire are being removed from Approved Document B, so only the EN standards can be used.
The EN standards provide more arduous and thorough testing, so we recommend doors are tested to the EN standards to provide safer doors.
- Ironmongery
A common misconception is that just because hardware is fire rated it can be used on a fire rated door to provide a fire rated doorset. This isn’t necessarily true, and it is important to speak to the door manufacturer to make sure there is accurate test evidence that the ironmongery can be used on the door.
To ensure speed and compliance, we provide a standard list of sizes, finishes and hardware that we know is compliant and ready to be ordered on a fast lead time.
We strongly advise checking the Field of Application (FOA) report prior to specifying a door to ensure that the entire system is compliant. The FOA will tell you what standard the doorset was tested to and for how long, as well as the ironmongery and wall. When specifying a door for your project, it is important to consider the entire building as a system. We recommend reading the FIS Walls as a System guide, which our Technical Director contributed to, as a best practice guide. Always be cautious of suppliers who are not forthcoming with test evidence.
- Installation
Once a fully compliant fire door has been procured, it is crucial that the fire door is installed correctly by a competent fire door installer. If you purchase your fire door from a trusted door manufacturer, they will be able to provide a list of proficient door installers. We have a list of trusted door installers from around the country and provide our very own Selo Academy, to provide the gold standard approach for installation of our doors to ensure full compliance. Speak to us for a list of competent door installers near you.
When working at speed, it can be tempting to cut corners, but the safety of the building and people inside is the most important factor. Fully compliant fire doors can be purchased and delivered to site quickly from trusted door manufacturers with an operation set up to do so. We can deliver fire rated doors to site in 10 working days. We can do this from stocking set sizes, finishes and hardware, then our unique adjustable architrave system allows the doors to be adjusted 20mm either side to fit any structural opening.
If you would like to find out more about our Selo Sprint service for retrofit projects, or our unique adjustable architrave system, then please contact us here.
If you would like an instant quote for you internal doorsets, the use our online quick quote calculator.