EMERGENCY EVACUATIONS
SHUT THAT DOOR
Douglas Cameron, Head of Health and Safety at Law At Work, offers some advice about the importance of fire door maintenance.
Fire doors are an essential part of fire safety defence - a crucial barrier to prevent fire and smoke spreading throughout a building.
Current standards for new buildings, conversions and major refurbishments are contained in the Building Regulations and the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 & The Fire (Scotland) Act 2005, and require fire doors to be maintained as part of the assessment compliance process.
To support those whose role includes health & safety, Law At Work have provided a simple briefing on fire doors.
DOOR LEAF/FRAME
CONDITION In general terms, doors can be classified in three ways:
• Good: The door shows no sign of damage.
• Fair: The door shows some signs of damage.
• Poor: The door shows signs of excessive damage and requires replacement.
WARPING OF DOORS This type of defect is most noticeable on fire doors held open by a device. There is an allowance of approximately 4mm deflection for a fire door to continue to be effective.
HINGES Fire doors are provided with two or three hinges – all should be inspected. Hinge replacement should be of the same size and type to maintain the integrity of the door and the number of original hinges maintained.
INTUMESCENT STRIPS These are critical and are designed to expand when subjected to heat in order to maintain the door in a closed position.
SMOKE SEALS They are provided to minimise the passage of smoke between a door and
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its frame. Part of its effectiveness relies upon there being constant contact between it, the door and the frame when the door is closed. Check for over-painting of the seal, as this undermines its integrity.
SELF-CLOSING MECHANISM There are a number of positive over- head closers; Perco; rising butt- hinges and spring dampened arms. The best is those of the positive type. The Perco type is acceptable, but requires greater attention to maintenance as the internal parts can become oil-clogged.
DOOR STOP The requirement for door stops, where intumescent and smoke seals are provided, is to stop the door swinging through the frame and allowing it to stop at the correct place to minimise damage.
LEAD EDGE/HEAD GAPS Gaps between doors and frames seriously affect the effectiveness of the door being a barrier to the passage of smoke.
A door without smoke seals should have a gap between the leading edges and head of the door of between 2mm – 4mm. For this to be an effective barrier against smoke spread, the door should sit tightly against the door stop with no warping.
Where smoke seals are provided, this gap can be greater than 4mm in order to accommodate the depth of the seal.
GLAZING/BEADING Georgian wired units can provide up to 120 minutes fire resistance when fitted to a door designated for 30 minutes resistance. Steel pins and intumescent seals are used to strengthen the glazed fitting in the door frame.
TRANSFER GRILLES These are found in doors to allow air circulation to and from the room. Such
grilles should be provided with dampers that close the grille on detection of smoke or heat within the room.
SIGNAGE ‘Fire Door Keep Shut’ signs should be provided on doors in or leading onto a communal escape routes, kitchens, boiler rooms and other doors that lead to high fire risk areas.
HOLD-OPEN DEVICE These are often found on cross- corridor doors or other doors that have constant traffic through them. They are usually magnetically held- open and interfaced with the fire alarm system and will close either on full evacuation alarm or on local smoke detector activation.
Floor mounted acoustic devices, which are stand-alone and not linked to the fire alarm system of detectors, release the door on full evacuation alarm.
SECURITY LOCKS Some fire exit escape doors are locked for security purposes. An over- ride button is provided in the direction of the escape side of the door. These doors are inter-faced with the fire alarm system in order to deactivate on full evacuation alarm.
Escape doors that do not have security devices fitted have manual single action “push pads or bars” to open the door on a single “hit” action.
Fire doors should be at the forefront of any health and safety manager’s mind, and guidance should be sought to ensure that they continue to maintain compliance.
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