5 Step Fire Door Check

Quick and simple fire door checks

Here is a very useful and simple 5 step fire door check guide on whether your fire doors are compliant, or indeed whether they are fire doors… Essential information in any fire door maintenance programme!

We want to emphasise the presence of intumescent seals around the door leaf or frame, which can sometimes be concealed behind the door lippings.  We recently found concealed intumescent seals on door assemblies that we surveyed which, from an initial visual inspection, did not appear to be designed as fire rated door assemblies.

BM Trada’s message is clear regarding the presence of intumescent seals.  If intumescent seals are not present in either the door leaf or door frame, then this door-set can never have been a designed and tested fire door-set.  Retrospectively routing in intumescent seals to ‘upgrade’ this door-set is not an Accepted Repair Technique, as the repair techniques have been designed to maintain the fire door assembly back to its originally intended fire rating.

It is not possible to turn a non-fire rated door-set into a fire rated door-set, so where intumescent seals are not present in either door leaf of door frame, these door leaves (and sometimes frames), must be replaced with designed and tested fire door-sets.