As specialists in our field, Fire Door Experts are constantly pushing for a raising of standards to provide better passive fire protection with regards to fire door installation and maintenance.

It still amazes us that there is still no real regulation around fire door installation!

Something that recently piqued the interest of Si West, Fire Door Experts Managing Director, was a technical document published by Richard Smith at NHBC. One section in particular highlighted the common practice fire doors being installed and offered for inspection at the pre-plaster stage of building works.

Why should that create such interest?

Fire doors need to be installed with exacting 2-4mm tolerances; as timber doors are made from natural species, any additional moisture added to the building’s atmosphere will see these natural material products change shape and size.

Add to this the fact that fire doors are widely installed by non-3rd party accredited installers in new builds, and the accuracy of installation reduces further.

Fire door leaf manufacturers are voicing concerns about their doors being installed in such conditions and whether the product warranty remains valid as stored and installed outside the recommended parameters, but more importantly, whether their passive fire protection properties remain!

These thoughts, and others gathered from reading various blogs and forums, triggered a letter from Si to Richard. Our common sense solution put forward..?

Why not just make it mandatory that ALL fire doors in ALL buildings MUST be installed and signed off by 3rd party accredited fire door installers?

Whether Si’s letter played a part or not, we can’t be sure, but it was very pleasing to read NHBC announce a U-turn on this subject shortly after the letter was sent.

Amended guidance was published in a new technical update which now offers three options for installers and contractors to help maintain the protection offered by fire door-sets and testing for integrity:

Option 1

Fire door frames installed at pre-plaster stage is still a valid option

Option 2

Fire door linings installed at pre-plaster stage to allow the fitting of the frame at a later stage.

Option 3

Fire door frames installed after pre-plaster with architraves not fitted until satisfactory inspection to ensure the linear gap is correctly fire stopped.

The NHBC is also conducting trials to assess the viability of 3rd-party accredited installers, which is a move that has been welcomed by fire door manufacturers who have cited the news as “definitely a win for safety”.

Consultation with all parts of the industry is vital is essential to ensure that installation quality and product safety is further improved. We’d like to think we’ve played a small part in this step forward, and will continue to lobby for all fire door installations and maintenance to be carried out by 3rd-party accredited, and therefore suitably trained and qualified, contractors.

Click below to read Si’s full letter.

315 fire doors successfully maintained despite unforeseen challenges

Fire Door Experts have completed fire door maintenance work on 315 bedroom, communal and riser doors on behalf of a large student accommodation chain successfully maintaining  all doors back to their originally intended fire rating.

Under our BM Trada Q-Mark Fire Door Maintenance accreditation, we can carry out a number of Accepted Repair Techniques to make fire doors compliant, techniques such as;

1. 1. Easing and adjusting the door so it hangs correctly in the frame to ensure the perimeter margins are within tolerance.
   2. Adjusting the frame to reduce excessive gaps on the long edges of the door leaf, particularly when working on veneer finish door leaves.
   3. Increasing the height of the door by adding hardwood lipping to the bottom edge.
   4. Installing automatic drop-down seals to provide smoke control where uneven floors make tight fire door tolerances of 3mm difficult to achieve.
   5. Replacing worn hinges to ensure the free swing of doors.
   6. Adjusting, or replacing, overhead door closers to ensure the doors self-close correctly so ensuring the integrity of the fire compartment.

These are just some of the Accepted Repair Techniques used to rectify the 658 identified non-compliances and maintain these fire doors back to compliance.

Projects such as these are normally challenging enough as our team work their way through the building. This particular project was made even more challenging as students began returning ready for the start of a new term. While this doesn’t sound a particularly difficult obstacle to overcome, when we remember this was the height of the Covid restrictions, and these students were arriving from all over the world…

Following Construction Leadership Council Site Operating Procedures Guidelines, and our ever evolving site-specific Risk Assessment and Method Statement, our technicians were able to book appointments for each apartment to ensure these guidelines and our RAMS were observed. This allowed social distancing and all other Covid-19 requirements to be applied and honoured so the project could continue smoothly.

One key point that was highlighted from this project…

Student accommodation… 315 fire doors… 658 identified non-conformities… ZERO compliant fire doors in the property before we commenced work!!

Planned Preventative Maintenance is vital for any fire doors, but when you have a few hundred fire doors, with people sleeping in the property, it really should be top of the Responsible Person’s list. Please see details of our PPM initiative here >> Fire Door Experts 360^®

Watch how quickly fire can engulf a room!

Working with our clients, not just for our clients…

It’s vital, when working on projects, that all parties concerned work for the betterment of the project, especially when a variety of suppliers are involved and an ever-increasing scope of work.

Fire Door Experts were originally engaged by Hanevo back in December 2018 to carry out the installation of 250+ fire doors on a fix only basis. Due to the quality and timeliness of our work, the clear communication channels and our professional project management, we have developed an excellent relationship with Hanevo which has led to further works being awarded for fire door maintenance work and the supply and installation of a number of fire doors, including;

Maintenance Work

Essential maintenance is now completed on 76 existing bedroom doors to the nurses home at Whittington Hospital where doors were maintained back to their originally intended fire rating. Work included resizing the doors by the addition of hardwood lippings to achieve correct door margins, the addition of batwing seals to add smoke control, the replacement of existing hinges with fire rated hinges, new overhead door closers to ensure the doors close correctly and appropriate fire door signage.

Further Maintenance Work

Whilst in the same block, we completed the maintenance of the existing kitchen and store room fire doors to maintain them to current standards.

Replacement On-Call Doors

15 On-Call bedroom doors have been replaced with 30-minute rated FD30s Ash veneer door-sets and integrated over panels. As well as offering passive fire protection, these replacement doors have an enhanced acoustic rating offering better potential for rest for the staff in a busy area of the hospital. Door-sets were supplied by Humphrey and Stretton with ironmongery from Spiller Door Controls Direct.

Improved Escape Route and Fire Compartmentation

We have just been awarded the contract to replace the existing stairwell doors in the nursing home for 60-minute rated FD60s fire door-sets and associated ironmongery, coupled with the supply and installation of new FD30s veneer leaf and a half door-sets to add corridor breaks and improve the fire compartmentation of the building.

Fix Only Door Installations

Whilst these new stairwell and corridor break doors are in manufacture, we have since recommenced on site for the second phase of the 18 month fire door replacement programme we were originally engaged for. This sees us replacing all the existing non-fire rated doors around the hospital on Level 1 with SDS Specialist Door Solutions fire door-sets, whom we are preferred installers.

Fire Door Surveys

We are currently working through reports having just completed a fire door survey of the existing fire doors on Level 2 of the hospital. Once complete, we will submit our survey report to Hanevo and The Trust with our recommendations.

Given the numerous steps involved in the fire door procurement process, especially when working on multiple concurrent sub-projects, strong project management skills are required along with clear and concise communications. Fire Door Experts pride ourselves on offering a true full circle service providing peace of mind from project conception to completion and beyond.

During these testing times, whilst our fire door technicians are strictly adhering to Covid-19 Standard Operating Procedures, we are carrying out essential fire door maintenance works for a London borough on behalf of Wates Living Space.

The London borough have just received a fantastic letter of commendation from The House of Commons highlighting how well these essential works have and are being managed given the current challenges we all face.

As a building owner, landlord or Responsible Person, you have a statutory obligation to ensure your fire doors are compliant and fit for purpose.

So, you instruct a third party accredited fire door contractor to inspect and assess your fire doors. You (should) then receive a detailed report and cost estimate. Naturally, you want to get comparison quotes, so you send the report out to other contractors to price up.

The following things then probably happen:

1 Other contractors refuse to provide costs for repairs based on someone else’s report.

2 Another fire door contractor will price up the report, but include many clauses to cover them for pricing off someone else’s report. This includes disagreeing with some elements of the report and / or not costing certain elements at all.

3 A lot of time elapses between from when the first report was commissioned and completed, to when you finally have (at least) 2 costings to ‘compare’.

4 Now you have at least 2 costs back, you can’t actually compare like for like as each contractor’s prices have different interpretations of the reports and what they have (and have not) allowed for. So, in effect, you can’t actually compare like for like.

5 Several months have since elapsed into this project, and you have not progressed any further as all you have managed to do is pay for a fire door survey which you have vastly different costs back for any remedial works, all with different views on what is permitted to be carried out to maintain an existing fire door assembly back to its originally intended fire rating.

If this has happened to you, this is where we can help!

Our Planned Preventative Maintenance Proposal for fire door maintenance works can filter out all this lost time and money with the traditional route of fire door surveys. With our PPM, we have different levels of service agreement to maintain your existing fire door assemblies back to their originally intended fire rating with BM Trada Certification, whilst we survey them!

This not only saves you the cost, lost time and headache of conflicting fire door survey reports and costs, it also ensures you are fulfilling your statutory obligations to maintain your fire doors.

Please get in touch for further information.

The Home Office has introduced a new bill to improve fire safety in buildings

Building on action already taken to ensure tragedies like the Grenfell Tower never happen again, the new Fire Safety Bill amends the Fire Safety Order 2005. This clarifies that the responsible person or duty-holder for multi-occupied, residential buildings must ensure fire door maintenance is carried out regularly. This is to manage and reduce the risk of fire for entrance doors to individual flats that open into common parts of the building.

More details will emerge over the coming months, but the Fire Door Experts team welcome this new Bill as this is an area of building maintenance that is often overlooked. Fire doors often only appear on a responsible person’s radar when they become faulty – by that time, they’re endangering life, and probably have been for some time!

With such exacting tolerances, such as 3mm gaps around the leaf edges, front entrance doors need to be regularly maintained and fit for purpose. This may sound a strange comment to make – they also need to be a fire rated door-assembly in the first place!

When carrying out surveys or maintenance works, we’re often presented with doors missing vital elements such as intumescent strips and fire rated hinges. Unfortunately, it’s not just a simple job for our technicians to fit these parts to “upgrade” a door into a fire door; without these parts present, we have to assume it was never a factory tested fire door – or the intumescent strips would have been present!

Simple, regular maintenance visits by accredited fire door technicians can keep all fire doors at optimum performance levels, and providing effective passive fire protection.

BM Trada Q-Mark Certificate 001 – we really were 1st!

Whilst recently rearranging the office, we realised what we had in our possession – the very first BM Trada Q-Mark certificate for door installation!

As well as being No. 001, we’re also very proud to be BM Trada Q-Mark certified. Here at Fire Door Experts, we firmly believe the detail required through Trada’s fire door inspection and maintenance schemes leave no stone unturned, and leaves a building’s Responsible Person in no doubt that the fire door assemblies will provide effective passive fire protection.

A prime example being a ‘fire door’ with no intumescent strips present can’t have been a factory tested fire door under the Q-Mark scheme, otherwise it would have the strips installed – which makes perfect sense when you think about it. Other schemes would allow the door leaves to have the edges routed and intumescent strips retrospectively fitted, but you can’t make a door into a fire door just by adding some strips and an overhead closer.

BM Trada have 23 Accepted Repair Techniques, and allow Certified maintainers to use these ARTs to maintain fire doors back to their original intended purpose as fire rated door assemblies. Fire Door Experts can then issue a Record of Maintenance Activity once the work is completed, along witht an O&M folder with all required fire test evidence, giving the building’s Responsible Person an audit trail of what was fitted, using what technique, on which date and by whom. This is vital information when looking after passive fire protection equipment.

The same level of detail is behind the Q-Mark door installation scheme, providing our clients with the knowledge that factory tested door-sets are being installed to the highest standards. That’s our opinion anyway, why not engage with us on your next fire door project and see the difference?!