The Importance of Fire Door Inspections
Fire doors are put in place to do a job: delay the spread of fire and smoke. They come in various categories which offer protection of 30, 60, 90 minutes and beyond. But, much like getting a new car, maintaining them is key to their effectiveness – which is why having your fire doors inspected regularly is key. Fire door inspections ensure that everything is as it should be and that they’ll do the job they’re supposed to in an emergency.
A fire door inspection, or fire door survey as they’re often called, involves us taking a look at existing fire-rated door sets to determine whether they’re compliant and can be certified as such. A compliant fire door set will adhere to many strict ‘rules’ or ‘laws’, which includes having the correct gaps around the door itself, ensuring all hardware is compliant (i.e. hinges, letter boxes, glazing etc), checking the material it’s constructed from, even the seals the door set encompasses and the fire stopping materials behind the architrave; any one of these aspects being even slightly off could result in a non-compliant door.
And it’s this huge number of variables which makes fire door inspections so important.
It’s because they’re complicated. It’s because it’s not as easy as installing a fire-rated door set and expecting it to perform. Fire door inspections require paperwork, they require a history of that particular door set, and they require experts like us to actually ensure that each piece is what it says it is. We need documentation and reassurance to put our name to something – because it’s your property on the line, and our expertise which is going to ensure that you’re covered if the worst happened.
Fire door inspections are built to protect you, the landlord, for sure; but really what we’re trying to do is save lives. If you expect your tenants or residents to have a certain amount of time to escape in the event of a fire, it’s your responsibility to make sure that’s the case – and it’s ours to give you the tools and information to do so.
If you’d like to learn more about the many different aspects to building compliant fire door sets – and keeping them that way – have a look at a blog we posted a while back, going over the ins and outs. And, for business or property owners in London and the south east, we’re a BlueSky certified business who take pride in what we do – get in touch to learn more about fire door inspections from Excel Fire.
