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For the lifetime of most buildings fire doors are just like any other doors. Yet the moment a fire occurs, they become a highly engineered part of the building’s fire safety system, playing a vital role in the prevention of the spread of fire. Scott Marshall explains.
Passive fire protection is based on the principle of containment. Buildings are divided into individual fire compartments, constructed and lined with fire resistant materials and protected by fire doors. Should a fire occur, it is contained within a compartment for a specified period of time, reducing fire spread through secondary ignition and limiting the movement of flame and smoke. Central to this strategy is the effective protection of fire escape routes, which are designed to withstand fire for long enough to allow a building’s occupants to leave safely.
The use of fire doors to prevent the spread of smoke and flames to lobbies, stairwells and lift shafts helps to maintain the structural integrity of a building, as well as to ensure the safety of its occupants. Containing a fire effectively and slowing the rate at which it spreads reduces the risk for those in the building. In restricting the damage a fire can cause, this also reduces the potential financial loss, whether through the disruption caused to businesses or to the building’s insurers.
But for a fire door to be effective it has to be correctly designed, manufactured, fitted and maintained. Crucially, according to the British Woodworking Federation’s BWF-Certifire Fire Door and Doorset scheme, all elements of the door assembly must be compatible. The best way to ensure this is to insist on a doorset.
Well-designed timber fire doors play a vital role in minimising the spread of fire in a building. But for a fire door to perform to its optimum, it’s crucial to consider not only the standard of the door but also to ensure the components used are compatible. The BWF recommends seeking third party certification to give specifiers, enforcement authorities, building owners and occupiers confidence in the quality and performance of fire doors.
Third party certification involves the testing of the fire door as a set or complete assembly including frame, ironmongery and intumescent seals. Verification of the test evidence must be produced and regular audits of the factory quality assurance system carried out. It is these measures which ensure the product supplied to the contractor meets and maintains the guaranteed quality of the original design.
The BWF-Certifire Fire Door and Doorset scheme, established by the fire door manufacturing industry, aims to promote the importance of using certificated fire doors as a preventative measure for fire safety precaution. Through the scheme, members can obtain a guarantee for the product they are using through assessment and certification of the design and manufacturing process and regular auditing. Through its label, the scheme offers clear and simple methods of tracing a fire door back through all stages of production, to ensure the quality of manufacture and maintain the certification. It also acts to bring together fire door manufacturers, their suppliers, door converters, retailers and installers to work in an alliance across the supply chain.
All the companies in the scheme have tested their products in a UKAS-accredited (United Kingdom Accreditation Service) facility to specific British and European standards, which enables them to demonstrate that they will be able to meet the requirements of national building regulations. These companies also voluntarily undergo independent audits to verify the continuing quality and fitness for purpose of their products.
The scheme’s certification partner Certifire, the product certification arm of Warrington Fire Research, tests and verifies a fire door’s design, performance, manufacturing process and associated procedures. It ensures an audit trail from manufacture to installation, including identification marking, and checks that the frame and compatible components used in the test are detailed.
Compatibility of components
The certification scheme places particular emphasis on the importance of compatibility of the components used in making up a doorset or door assembly. It is wrong to assume you can use any frame, hinge, intumescent seal or ironmongery with any given fire door. Fire doors are designed and tested as complete assemblies, with all the components contributing to the overall result. Using incompatible parts effectively alters the specification and changes the design, instead of replicating it. This can seriously undermine the effectiveness of the fire door, and could reduce the time of fire-resistance advertised on the label.
This objective is at the heart of the current message of the BWF’s fire door scheme. We want to drive home the fact that only when a fire door is part of a ‘component compatible’ doorset or door assembly, is it guaranteed to perform to the ratings achieved in independent tests.
Recent research carried out by the BWF revealed that no less than 70% of builders’ merchants were unaware of the need for components to be compatible with a tested design, while 75% thought it was OK to sell any component with any fire door. As nearly 80% of all fire doors are sold through builders’ merchants, the need to educate the industry on compatibility of fire door components is urgent.
Arguably the most overlooked aspect of the whole operation is installation. Here, too, the scheme has sought to address any potential problems by insisting that specific and comprehensive installation instructions accompany every door that is shipped. Furthermore, installers are left in no doubt that these instructions must be followed scrupulously for the door to remain certificated. The Federation has established a link with FIRAS, Warrington Fire’s accreditation scheme for fire door installers, to develop a fire door installer scheme where accredited installers can be relied on to comply with installation requirements.
The BWF’s tamper-evident labelling system is a fundamental part of the scheme, providing the basic information about the product and a complete system, which means any door can be traced right back through every stage of production and modification. Every door or doorset manufactured under the scheme carries a label confirming its fire rating. Every frame, glass opening and glazed aperture is labelled, detailing the manufacturer’s name, telephone number, a serial number specific to the product, and the certificate number. If a scheme member puts a frame around the door, or cuts and glazes a vision panel, they will add their own label confirming that their work is also verified and audited by Certifire under the scheme, maintaining the validity of the original certificate. If a scheme fire door is modified by someone who is not a member of it, the chain of audit, verification and traceability is broken and the certificate invalidated. In short, you can no longer be certain you can rely upon it.
Once the fire door has been installed correctly with all compatible components, it is critical to the performance of the door that it is maintained regularly. The BWF advises that all timber doors should be checked every six months, though newly occupied buildings may require more frequent checks in the first year, and when a door is heavily used it should be checked every three months. Every fire door produced by a member of the scheme is supplied with installation, care and maintenance instructions.
As fire doors are an integral part of passive fire safety protection playing a vital role in the prevention of the spread of fire, it is essential fire doors and doorset components are compatible and fitted correctly. The BWF scheme offers a supportive approach to those involved in this process, from manufacturers and installers to customers and bodies responsible for overseeing fire safety management.
Scott Marshall is manager of the BWF-Certifire scheme. For a list of manufacturers and suppliers in the BWF-Certifire Fire Door and Doorset Scheme, phone 0870 458 6939, e-mail firedoors@bwf.org.uk or look on the BWF’s web-site at www.bwf.org.uk